A week and a day at the hospital

I've now been at the hospital for a week and a day and it has now sunk in that the healthcare here is absolutely awful! Every morning there is a handover meeting and each day there are at least 2 deaths to report in the previous 24 hours....Tuesday morning there was 6 deaths from a ward of 90 patients which is just a ridiculous amount. Thankfully this week none of my patients have decided to die although one tried her best today (very annoying case, I thought it was acute renal failure on Monday- doctor didnt - started getting more ill today and then the doctor was like "I think its acute renal failure"......shock!). I'm v proud of myself this week as managed to put in my first catheters...except one of the student nurses opened the urine collecting bag and piss went all over the floor...but also have been having a mare of butchering peoples veins trying to take blood but thankfully because of the black skin you can't see the bruises :D!

One of the biggest annoyances here is the work ethic of the Malawian clinicians. There are lots of what is called a "clinical officer" who are the equivalent of junior doctors (FYs) in the UK. However, these guys just turn up when they want and absolutely disappear in the afternoons leaving the medical students running the ward (ack!!!!).  Several patients have not been seen for days meaning that they are either better and can go home...or that they are about to die when someone does see them!

On the up side there is now a crack team of medics on the ward including Dr Allan Martin MD, Family Medicine from Arkansas who used to be a military man but has now had the "call from god" to come to Malawi (I hope I get the call too...but preferably to the Seychelles!), Australian medical student Damien (Damo to those who have ever watched neighbours) whose main aim in his time here is to slap a hippo on the ass and Mike and myself. Between us we've not had a single death all week....WIN!!

In other news I ventured out into Lilongwe nightlife last night with our lunchtime crew of medical students to a place called "the shack." Pretty good description of the place but it has cheap food and cheap malawi gin (which apparently is just gin flavoured ethanol?!) and its where all the cool Mzungus (white people) go on a Wednesday! I'm off up to the lake this weekend so hopefully will be as red as as postbox when I come back!