Back to OPD

I’m back in the outpatient delivery (OPD) rotation at the teaching hospital! Unfortunately, Dr. Arthur was not feeling well this morning so I ended up working with one of her colleagues, Dr. Ellen. She was a very nice lady who taught me a lot of things. Today, I got to try something new. Dr. Ellen asked me to take a history of all the patients. This meant I was responsible for questioning the patient’s parents in order to come up with a provisional diagnosis. It took me a few patients to get better at doing this and Dr. Ellen was right next to me. She assisted me when I ran out of questions or if the patient preferred to speak in Fante (the local language). She also of course would eventually make the final verdict on the diagnosis, medications, and referrals (if needed). However, she challenged me to think critically today and pushed me out of the observational role that I’ve been accustomed to back in the States. She would ask me what I thought about each case. Afterwards, I would turn to Dr. Ellen where she would ask some questions that I may have forgotten or some follow up questions to better understand the child. It’s nice to see that referrals happen on the same day whereas in the U.S, it can take days or even weeks for referrals to occur. Same day referrals definitely adds a lot of convenience and it also reduces the stress of the patients. After using my brain for about six hours, I came home and did some basic research on some of the cases from today. In the evening, one of our cohort members who was been working at a family planning clinic came home with her mentor. His name was Michael and I had a great conversation with him. He talked about how many kids in Ghana will have sex which can be as early as nine years old. This was very disturbing to hear and some of the kids are raped. I applaud all the work that they do at the family planning clinic to help promote good public health education. Tomorrow, I will continue with the same procedure and hopefully see some new cases!

My apologies for not taking any pictures today. OPD was very busy today especially since Dr. Arthur was not present! I thought today might be a good day to upload a picture of the outside of the house that I’m staying at. The house is on the left and this is a walkway. You can see some more houses in the background which I think is pretty cool!

7/17/19