LLU Med Students Hold Down The Fort

There was a mass exodus of medical personnel from Hopital Adventiste d'Haiti last Friday.  The ortho team consisting of 2 attendings, 2 residents, and 1 anesthesiologist along with General Surgeon Tom Kramer vacated their posts.  One of the obstetricians left as well.

Fortunately, we left our patients in the capable hands of Corey Fuller, member of the  Loma Linda School of Medicine Class of 2010.  As mentioned in a prior post, Corey has been accepted into the Orthopaedics Surgery Residency Program at Loma Linda and had scrubbed with us on numerous occasions over the past week so he knew our patients well and functioned with an "ortho mindset."

Corey sent me the following email early this morning:

"Things have been going great here.  I've done all the dressing changes without any problems. We have had some patients show up for ortho issues in the ER and clinic over the weekend.  A sprained ankle, some followups for fractures, suture removals...but nothing too big for me to handle.  It has been a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to starting residency so I can be of greater use next trip!"

In the image above, Corey performs a dressing change under the supervision of the Interim Medical Director Dr Robert Soderblom.

In comparison to the orthopaedic team, the General Surgery Department has been relatively understaffed over the past couple of weeks with only one attending Dr Tom Kramer.  He greatly appreciated the addition of LLU Senior Medical Student Alex Coutsoumpos to his service.  Alex, pictured below on the right, was a natural for the job as he has been accepted into a General Surgery Residency at Loma Linda starting this summer.

We were also grateful to have 3 additional LLU medical students join us during our stay.  Pictured below from L to R are Donald Whang, Jonathan Lio, and Jason Horinouchi.

When Donald and Jason arrived, the pediatricians had left leaving them as the primary caretakers of that department.  Dr Bob reports that they have done an outstanding job.

When Dr Dan left early last week, Jonathan assumed the role of managing our storeroom as well as organizing communications and transportation.  He also has performed in an exemplary fashion.  We were constantly bombarding him with requests for obscure equipment and supplies.  We were especially grateful that he got us all to the airport on time!