In the scorching heat, families, patients and healthcare workers go about their daily activities around this hospital compound. It's a hospital, but almost a city of its own, sheltered from another type of chaos that ensues daily, on the other side of the large metal doors, from the overpopulated streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
In a hospital population with a constant flow of gunshot wounds and traumas, this little compound nesting in the deadly heat of the bustling city of Pauto prince, Haiti, faces the triumphs and struggles and constant battles of life and death in all ages of their vast populations.
The sun rises and roosters are crowing as I climb into my scrubs and climb down the stairs to the Haitian medical hustle, that is beginning its daily eruption on the ground beneath me.
On the hospital compound, each unit or section of the hospital is in its own separate quarters, which requires patients and staff to walk outside when transferring between various hospital units, diagnostic tests, or even the bathroom. They may have a gunshot wound or a large infected diabetic foot ulcer, but if they need the restroom they trek outdoors, across an overcrowded courtyard that also serves as the hospital waiting area and family lounge, in order to go about their business. Sometimes they must navigate through family members sleeping on the floor of the courtyard, peddlers selling paintings and beaded goods, or vehicles unloading bleeding patients into the triage area.
The hospital has a CT scanner and X-ray machines that are housed a trailers in the very same courtyard. But like any diagnostic tests, patients must first have a family member pay the fee before they can be rolled over for the test. The imaging are done in trailers parked in the courtyard, and the results are sent to the US to be read, since they have no radiologist on staff. While the local doctors can visualize the imaging for a basic read, it can take 24 or more hours to get an official read; and till then, the patient will lounge on the stiff stretcher with a plastic cover, in the scorching heat of a room they call an emergency room.
As a hospital that receives vast numbers of trauma cases each day, blood products are often an issue. A blood bank with cross matched blood, or even o negative does not exist. The only way for a patient to receive a blood transfusion, is if a family member or a friend who is a match can donate. Sadly, some patients die waiting for blood.
It's my first day, My scrubs are melting against my skin, I meet Emerson, he is my partner for the next few hours and with a metal cart stocked with the Barest skin and wound care essentials we begin our skin and wound rounds.
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