07/08/2018
Guyana clinic day 1: Sophia, Georgetown.
Hello everyone!
Today was our first day of clinic, and we were incredibly excited to see our patients! Sophia (or Sapphia as referred to by the locals) clinic is located in Georgetown, Guyana in a church and is considered the busiest out of the four clinics the team usually volunteers at. Because of its location, patients know exactly when U.S. healthcare providers will be there and are waitkng for them on the day of service. Besides being the busiest, this clinic also services the greatest number of pediatric patients as the Guyanese tend to have large families.
So, let me tell you a little bit about our workflow. We arrived to the clinic around 9 a.m., and immediately started to set up the pharmacy. It is really important that the pharmacy is ready by the time the first few patients are seen by the providers to ensure smooth service can begin. I was very lucky to have Dr. Karina Muzykovsky, who works as a critical care pharmacist at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in N.Y., as my supervisor. We also had two wonderful nurses on our team - Joyce and Claire, who helped us fill, label and dispense medications. The four of us were running the pharmacy today and will continue to do it until our last day of clinic on Thursday.
Unfortunately, patients who came to clinic today are not able to see doctors and pharmacists anywhere else despite free Government healthcare and medications that are generally available in the hospitals. The reasons for that are lack of public transportation and resources, long distances, literacy level, etc. As volunteers come twice a year, patients get their medications only at that time. This gets very complicated since many adult patients have chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and are not always able to get full 6 months supply of essential meds to control their diseases. For example, today we saw two critical patients - both middle aged females, one with blood pressure 200/110 mmHg, and another one with blood glucose 470 mg/dL. Fortunately, both were managed at the clinic and were ok after we administered proper medications. For hypertensive patient we administered 0.1 mg clonidine and re-checked blood pressure later. She was discharged with three months supply ramipril and atenolol. And for hyperglycemic patient we administered 2.5 mg glyburide twice within an hour. It was done to prevent hypoglycemic episode, which patient stated happened to her before while she was on this medication. Both ladies were not taking their medications as prescribed prior to our arrival, and as a result were not able to control their chronic diseases. All these factors were the reason Dr. Muzykovsky and I wanted to spend more time today on counseling every single patient on the importance of taking their medications properly. Thankfully, almost every single patient appreciated that kind of attention and expressed their gratitude by thanking and hugging us, which I thought was so special!
We saw a total of 108 patients today about third of them being pediatric patients. It was amazing how patient and calm those people were while waiting to see a doctor or to get their medications, and we tried our best to minimize waiting times. Every patient dropped their prescription off at the pharmacy station and got counseled when they picked it up. And I still can't believe we pulled it off!
Today I've done something that brought an indescribable sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and I can't wait to see what the following days have to offer. Please, stay tuned for more posts and pictures!
P.S. I will be posting more pictures from today soon. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi is slow and doesn't allow anymore photos to upload.
