I apologize for the long break in posting. Gary and Sherry recently gave me an incentive to start again, so here goes. We have a couple of months to catch up on so hopefully there should be a few more posts coming out over the next week or so.
The biggest news since my last post is that I am officially employed! I am about to complete my first month at Bethel Teaching Hospital. Unfortunately, I have failed to take any pictures so stay tuned. Everyone from support staff to nurses to doctors have been really welcoming and while I have been working long hours, it has been great to get back into clinical practice. I am hopeful that as I get used to the systems here that I will be able to get myself out of the hospital at more reasonable times. Currently, I am primarily doing adult inpatient medicine. It has been a great refresher considering I did very little adult medicine while in Swaziland. In addition to the clinical responsibilties, I have also been named a visiting assistant professor for the medical school. The first year clinical students started a couple weeks ago and we are just completing a short course in basic history taking and physical exam. Next week they will start on their hospital rotations.
So far the thing that has made the biggest impression on me in my short tenure is the family support. It is unlike anything I have experienced in the US or Swaziland. In the US, you often had one, maybe two, visitors at a time and the visits were short. In Swaziland, there would be a caretaker, often a female member of the family, who was there 24 hours. In Ethiopia, every patient is surrounded by family from morning until night, including young and old, men and women. It is not unusual to have to ask 5-6 people to leave the room so you can even get close to the patient. Even when the patients have been hospitalized for weeks or months, there is not a day where they do not have multiple people at their bedside. It is quite a testimony to the importance the culture places on family.
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