Thanks entirely to your generous donations, Tintswalo hospital has just received 6 state-of-the-art defibrillators with full monitoring capacity.
The ONLY such machines in the hospital.
Thank-you (again) Procamed!
But we can't simply plug them in and walk away.
Because the hospital has never had such tools before, resuscitating patients was never a reality. That means that the staff need to relearn how to use them and resuscitation needs to be integrated into a broader system of care...and in particular (the whole point of this project) into our new high care units!
Enter David and Tammy Stanton 🦸🏼🦸🏼♂️ of NetCare911: the leading emergency medical service in South Africa with a first-class training course in Advanced Life Support.
This husband and wife team have dedicated their careers to improving the standard of critical care, and generously agreed to donate their entire weekend to certify 12 of our doctors in the (literally) resurrecting skill of resuscitation.
They even taught us how to use all the phenomenal functions of our new toys, from external pacing a slow heart to cardioverting a fast one (and everything in between)!
We used and abused Siphiwe and Sammy, the resus dummies, in a weekend of complex critical care scenarios: identifying and defibrillating a range of heart attack types, intubating vomiting patients, finding antidotes to overdoses and poisonings and dealing with massive haemorrhage in pregnant women.
One of the most important outcomes was team building. Where one doctor concluded:
For the first time, I feel like resuscitation could become a routine practice in Tintswalo...
This change in mindset was 100% due to David and Tammy's tailored teaching approach. Their deep knowledge and experience in limited-resource settings allowed them to adapt the scenarios to our reality; offering pragmatic and accessible hacks to missing medications, equipment or services.
With your donations we are now solidifying these teachings by printing algorithm posters that will adorn the resuscitation room that was made with (you guessed it) YOUR DONATIONS!
And just in case you think that this is not remarkable enough...the course also gave our doctors accreditation as trainers in CPR and basic life support...meaning that we will be training all the nursing and allied health staff as well as porters, security guards and even the maintenance crew. So that all Tintswalo staff will know what to do in a resuscitation inside and outside of the hospital, spreading health education into their communities (where most heart attacks occur).
We are now making the final plans to distribute these six machines in strategic locations amongst the 423 beds of Tintswalo hospital.
Stay tuned for more! (and don't hesitate to DONATE to see more direct benefits to patient care)
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