I have just completed my first week at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, Ghana and have started week 2. It has been an interesting experience so far. My travel to Ghana was uneventful. My first day was very busy and started with echocardiogram of a Man with pulmonary tuberculosis and heart failure. Given that I have a handheld echo machine it was easy to image him at the emergency unit. I took the opportunity to start teaching the two providers who are participating in the focused echocardiogram training. The hospital has a standard echo machine but have no providers to do echocardiograms, so this training will be extremely beneficial to the hospital and the patient population they serve. The CEO wants me to set aside one day a week to provide echocardiogram service for outpatients. I will continue to perform inpatient echocardiograms with the current two trainees every day throughout my stay.
Erica, 12 year old HIV infected patient on treatment after participating in the training session as a volunteer.
William is a 2ndyear imaging technology student, who will be a potential trainee, imaging a child from the subcostal window on the mother’s arms. This was his first time of holding an ultrasound probe. He is excited about the new skill set that he is going to acquire.