By Ryan Van Nostrand
This week was an interesting week. During clinic days there were a number of good ultrasound teaching
cases including a DVT US which was positive. There was a unique opportunity to go the regional hospital
in Linden which is a mining town and more resource poor in terms of medical care. One of the senior
registrars was kind enough to take us and show us the hospital and wards. She goes there every couple
of weeks. Discussing the impact of having an emergency medicine trained person there was revealing.
She noted there are definitely things that have improved with the repeat visits and reinforcement of
certain principles which are core to EM. It was nice to discuss and see firsthand the improvements and
education the staff had enacted.
I was also able to get to know some of the other people in doing other work in Guyana. I met a number
of people in the Peace Corps throughout my trip but got a better chance to talk with them this week. It
was nice to hear about some of the work on training people for the EMS system, from where the system
started, and where it is now. It seemed like there has been a lot of change as there was no EMS system
just a short while ago in Guyana. They are continuing to refine the process to try to get an established
system people can rely on.