From April 30 to May 3, Dr. Robert Harris, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Professor and Co-Director of Ultrasound at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Bridgette Lunsford, Senior Ultrasound Clinical Applications Specialist at GE Healthcare, led an ultrasound training for 11 physicians at Hospital St. Therese in Hinche in Haiti. Over the course of four days, participants in the training attended lectures and practiced using the machines on each other but the bulk of their time was spent on the wards of HSTH examining patients and volunteers. A range of topics were covered including the use of ultrasound in trauma, abdomen, retroperitoneum, chest, pediatrics including neonatal head ultrasound, obstetrics and gynecology, and basic echocardiography.
The procurement of two new GE portable (Logic e laptops) ultrasound machines for HSTH was made possible by Partners In Health. With the new equipment and training, the physicians at the 190-bed departmental-level hospital, which serves a catchment area of 250,000, will be better equipped to diagnosis and treat patients despite limited resources. In their evaluation forms, participants said they found the course worthwhile and welcomed future training. One participant said, “everything I learned during the training will be very useful to me, especially how to scan patients to diagnose deep vein thrombosis. This kind of disease is very frequent in my patients.”
Each participant received a certificate of completion at the end of the four-day training. All those involved recognize that the four-day training is just an introduction to ultrasound, which requires extensive practice to master. HSTH physicians will be able to stay in touch with Dr. Harris via email, sharing ultrasound images that may need a second opinion, or simply for educational review. We also hope to offer a follow-up training later this year as a refresher course for the physicians who participated in this course. In the future, we hope those trained can go on and train other staff, including nurses, at HSTH.
Dartmouth's partnership with HSTH dates back to the 2010 earthquake, when three Dartmouth medical teams took care of patients, many of whom had fled Port-Au-Prince to receive medical care. Up until now, much of the partnership has centered on tele-education for physicians and nurses. Each week, physicians at Hinche log onto Grand Rounds-style lectures organized by the Haiti Medical Education Project. Recently, the lectures have expanded to nurses, and are a big hit.
The training was organized in partnership with Partners In Health/Zanmi Lasante, The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, and DHMC.
-- Reported by Amita Kulkarni, Presidential Fellow in Global Health at The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science
