No Powerpoints....No Problem

After over 1 year of preparation, it was an amazing first day.  The first day of the course was really a prelude to the SAFE course. 12 participants participated in a train-the-trainers course which focused on skills to be a better teacher and the remainder of the group participated in “ Building Safe Teams.”  The buzz word for the day was  “communication.”  How do you communicate better with your students, anesthesia colleagues, and colleagues in the operating room.  Topics included such things as Non-technical skills, an Introduction to the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, the Universal Anesthesia Machine, Life Box Pulse Oximetry and more.

Week 1 SAFE Course Participants

Since the majority of the participants prefer french as their primary language, discussions were conducted in French, English, Kinyarwanda, or some combination of the three.  For those of you wondering about my language skills, English is definitely my preferred language so I clearly had some help.

Sophie from Lifebox explaining the WHO Surgical Safety  Checklist

Despite all the preparation and three different projectors, we were unable to display our slides for our WHO Surgical  Safety checklist presentation (there were only a few) but it just didn’t matter.  Willy, one of the local Rwandan faculty, moderated the session and it was absolutely amazing.   He did a brief overview of the importance of the Checklist in patient safety and we then demonstrated how to perform the checklist by acting out various scenarios . It was quite humorous but also very effective. The audience really enjoyed it and asked great questions. 

Much of the equipment I brought over from the US including the mannequins, ambu bags, and criocothyroidotomy trainers are finally going to good use.  A special thanks to all who donated.  I am very appreciative of everyone who has donated their time and energy into developing this course.  It is hard to believe it is actually happening.  Very exciting….

2 broken projectors.  The 3rd one sort of worked:)

Cricothyroidotomy from Synatomy. Very lifelike!

The day finished with what turned into a 2 1/2  hour discussion with several of the participants about the Anesthetic considerations for Cleft Lip an Palate surgery.    Smile Train asked me if I could provide some additional training in this area for some select individuals from these four district  hospitals.   A special thanks to Paulin who helped me give this lecture as 1/2 of our audience spoke English and the other 1/2 only french.   From their questions, I realized how fortunate I am to have the resources available at home to take care of my patients.  Despite their excellent knowledge, the lack of anesthetic equipment and medications makes caring for children in Rwanda incredibly challenging.

Stay tuned for Day 2 but really the first day of the SAFE Obstetrical Anesthesia Course…..It is going to be another crazy day