La Pediatrie

As I now have two days of working at the hospital under my belt, I think I can talk a bit more authoritatively about the daily schedule. It is both similar to medical school rotations in the United States and crazily different. First thing we do is gather to hear about the patient's overnight from the nurse who was on call. There is no doctor who takes call normally. The nurses just have everyone's cell phone numbers and they call if something really serious is going on. The report also consists of kids who had fevers, and the rest is "rien a signaler" (nothing to report). Next we round on all the patients, the first day there were 44, this morning there were 40. Patients are 3, to a room, or if they sick/premie babies there are 4 incubators, 2 to a room. We chat with each patient, look at their hemogram if they have one, and then move on. There are no daily notes, certainly no daily labs, and a very difficult to learn formulary list of medications. Rounding takes a couple of hours. Then we go do newborn baby checks, which I loved in Chicago and continue to do so here. Next we start "consultations" which are basically clinic appointments. These run until 1/2pm, we have lunch, come back and finish up with consults who need lab results returned to them and anyone else who may have straggled in. But at any point if there are emergencies or things to talk about then we do those things as well when the moment calls for it.

So far that about makes up my day. I work with an ever changing team of French/German/Gabonese/Togoan/Guinean doctors which also makes things interesting and spicy. I took some pictures today and will post them soon. A toute a l'heure mes amis.