Esperança Foundation: Jinotega, Nicaragua – Jillian Main, MD

Posted by Jillian Main, MD (a third year OBGYN resident from Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco while on a global health elective in Jinotega, Nicaragua with Esperança Foundation).

For this global health elective, I was fortunate enough to go back to the same hospital in Nicaragua as I went to last year. One of our OBGYN attendings, does multiple international surgical missions each year. We went to Jinotega, Nicaragua with one Kaiser Permanente San Francisco anesthesiologist last year for one week and did GYN surgery with a program called Avodec. This year, she was able to coordinate though the same program to bring two OBGYN attendings, two anesthesiologists and two GYN residents. We had two ORs and were able to see/operate on double the number of patients we had last year. We flew out on a red-eye Friday after work, set up the ORs and organized our 6 boxes of supplies/equipment on Saturday, and began our triage on Sunday. We did H&Ps and full pre-op exams on over 100 patients, working in two rooms. Monday, we began operating and operated all day for the remainder of the week. We completed mostly vaginal surgery with only three abdominal ovarian cystectomies. Our patients stayed in one ward of the hospital with Avodec hired MDs and RNs and we saw our patients in both the morning and evening. We also worked with several of the Jinotegan Urologists and Gynecologists- having them scrub into cases and having them do some of procedures for education. It was a tiring but very rewarding experience. The patients were in such need of surgery and so appreciative for their care. It was motivating and inspiring.