updates
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 08/Mar/2010 12:22, 34 days ago
On the couple in the car crash:‘Pushing the envelope of helicopter medevac…’They have been in the hospital since I left. Even though I delivered them in c-spine collars and ordered cervical spine x-rays and cervical spine CT scan on both of them and told the ICU doctor, the orthopaedist and the general surgeon caring for them that I was highly suspicious, especially in the woman, for cervical spine fractures, both of them had their collars removed in the ICU and neither of them had an x-ray or CT of their neck while I was gone. The woman, in particular, has been very floppy since leaving the ICU and recently developed new numbness. The physiotherapist put her back in the collar. An MRI of her neck was finally performed which showed a high cervical spine fracture.They will be medevaced back to the states tomorrow.Breaking news update on IHK:IHK and its parent organization IMG (International Medical Group) now has a new vision statement, or is it mission statement:‘Providing Healthcare to International Standards’Not surprisingly, it took a 3-day strategic planning session with hired consultants and all of the IMG’s top managers to come up with this new mission/vision statement which is even slightly more vague and even more impossible to measure than the previous vision statement: ‘Making a Difference in Healthcare for Uganda.’Healthcare, unfortunately doesn’t have any ‘international standards.’ Even the US and the UK can’t agree on something as simple as CPR (the American Heart Association teaches breaths before compression while the British Heart Association teaches compressions before breaths). Who’s going to set the ‘international standards?’ Will they be set in Europe, or Asia, or the Americas? Boston or Bangladesh? And if they are set, will they even be applicable in Uganda?