Day 19-20 (Wednesday+Thursday) - Gutter wait

Everyone had a day off today while we waited for the concrete flooring (and 5 sets of very strained hamstrings) to cure.

Close-up of our beautiful concrete #floorporn

To ensure we minimise the massive inconvenience of relocating the ER, the flooring crew worked through the night 🧛🏼, and we have now gained 48hours on the original projected flooring timeline of 7 days!!

Keep in mind that right now, all our urgent care has moved to a make-shift courtyard outside, and beds have been sardined into some adjoining corridors. To get from one bed to another, the health staff suck in their bellies and hope that their blind step will not end in a bruise.

While it is clearly not comfortable, everyone is very happy to sacrifice their comfort for a week to gain these practice-changing renovations that will not only directly and significantly lower the mortality rate, but also help instil a sense of pride in their workplace.

There is still another 24 hours to wait before we can add the 🤩shiny polyurethane coating 🤩on top of the concrete that will make the floor last a lifetime of urgent activity (this latter coat takes another 48hours to dry).

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The floor is an important place at Tintswalo. Without benches for the ER, our sickest patients are expected to find another place to wait....

...and if they have a "minor" emergency that would require a few hours wait....sitting in a gutter of a public hospital is often just about embarrassing enough that they rather choose to weather it out at home (until their condition deteriorates to the point that they would merit prioritised care).

Little do they know that there is NO official prioritisation of urgent care in the Tintswalo ER.

And THIS is why this whole project was initiated in the first place: TRIAGE.

These renovations specifically aim to create Tintswalo's first triage bay where a dedicated nurse will stratify patients into the classic colour-coded categories of severity: 🔵🟢🟡🟠🔴. It is an absolutely fundamental part of emergency care, and we are excited to get this working.

So, in the background to all these renovations, we have been constructing a new triage workflow, which is now immortalised into an official triage sheet that will be used to assess each patient in a standardised manner.

Two accompanying posters will be printed on metal tomorrow to help guide the TEWS (triage early warning score) calculation.

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Also, we relocated (stole 🤫) a bench from the outpatient department to place in front of the emergency room. It was immediately put to excellent use.

But we will be found out soon, so it is time to make benches for our patients! The plans have just been sent to a local carpenter...let's hope we can afford it!!

Finally: the results of the epic CURTAIN COLOUR VOTE are IN☄️.

LIGHT GREY 🐘!!