Initial thoughts

; We are now starting our second day here. We did surgery last night and finished up around midnight. We have just had three more Orthopaedic Surgeons arrive. Brad Walter and I made rounds with the French Doctors and found enough cases for us to fill three ORs into the night. He thinks we need to do that more than once a day. The French are manning the non-operative part of the hospital: Triage, Medical, preoperative and postoperative care. They have an army of physicians along with some nurses and other care-givers. We would be dead in the water without them. Their Embassy has also sent security officers. One child kidnapping has already been thwarted.
Comfort with ignorance:I begin by advising the reader that much of this blog is subject to change. The situation in a disaster is very fluid: missing materials are often more than adequately supplied as donations come in. The arrival of unanticipated cases may point out deficiencies that you didn’t know existed. The volunteer needs to be comfortable with the fact that he or she doesn’t know exactly what is going on. It is an experience of truth-by-approximation.  This also applies to the army of non-medical volunteers who have come to help. They have been tremendous help to us. Because of this drifting situation all volunteers need to stay a minimum of five days to produce effective work.
Patient Assertivenss of the Volunteer: A certain amount of assertiveness is necessary to produce order out of chaos.  The French doctors here and the American ER doc over at Community Hospital have asserted their will in controlling the incoming patients. We just got a volunteer who had been an OR supervisor and has made our sterilizer, a recent donation form another source, work.  We have been blessed here and at the community hospital with volunteer administrators creating order out of chaos. They need also to be flexible or patient. Like us they have learned as they have gone along, mixing assertiveness with flexibility. Stay a week, minimum.

Travel SelfcontainedAt first I thought this meant bringing your own food and water and it does. But it also means so much more. As you have read above, our rapidly improving situation is dependent on so many people using their expertise: nurses, OR ICU and ER, Anesthesiologists, administrators, ER physicians, Internists and pediatricians and business people. The larger the group you can associate with the more you can accomplish (if they are effective.)