Haiti

At the end of February, I went on a medical mission trip to Haiti for a week. It was an eye-opening experience with sad, happy and scary situations. Our group flew into the Dominican Republic, and then drove six hours into Haiti to a tent hospital in Fond Parisian. The tent hospital was located on half of the campus of Love a Child, a Haitian orphanage. The orphanage program moved to one side of the campus after the earthquake to make room for the tent hospital. There were a few brick buildings for the storage warehouse, pharmacy, and casting room. The staff stayed in tents on one side of the medical camp while the patient tents were on the other side. There were about ten long rows of patient tents consisting of about 280 patients total. Even the PACU, triage and OR were in types of tents. Another nurse and I shared daily a row of about 30 patients. When we were done, we went to other rows to help. Our day started with a 7:00 am meeting and ended with a 7:00 pm debrief.
Most of the nursing care consisted of dressing changes and self-care teaching. There were many limb injuries from the earthquake. Many people had amputations right after the earthquake. They are now receiving physical therapy to teach them how to function with one or more missing limbs. Many limbs were also saved, and these patients have external fixators to give their bones a chance to heal. A surgical team returned to the camp in May to remove the external fixators and fit the patients with support boots. Some of the Haitians that received compound fractures are still trying to keep their healing wounds infection free.
I was very impressed with the care that the patients were receiving in this camp. There were many teams of doctors and nurses from various countries providing care. Countries represented in this camp included the U.S., the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Israel and Italy. Once patients were healed and discharged, they were moved to a transition camp up the road called Camp Hope. I do worry about where the patients will go from there. It was hard to leave not knowing what will happen to the patients that we bonded with. As we crossed the border from Haiti back into the Dominican Republic, we witnessed miles of supply trucks and construction trucks waiting to get into Haiti to provide support. The hope is as people heal medically, organizations will step in to help rebuild the broken homes.