Matasanos Medical Brigade

 August 16th-August 21st I had the opportunity to go on my first medical brigade as a Global Brigades staff member. It was a very different experience being on staff compared to brigading as a student but I really enjoyed the extra responsibility. It was also the biggest brigade I have ever been on. Students from Wake Forest University, Texas A&M, UT Texas and Texas Arlington were on this brigade- 64 students total! Because we had so many students on this brigade we were able to staff each station efficiently and increase the quality of care that we gave to each patient. I met some really amazing students on the brigade and learned so much more than I thought I would. It is my hope this year to not only impact the lives of the Hondurans that we work with but to also inspire as many students as possible. It is such a overwhelming feeling to see how much impact these students really are having on the lives of the patients they see as well as how much the students are being impacted throughout the week. One thing that I absolutely love about this job is that I am continuously learning something new each and every day and I hope that never changes. 

The community that we worked in this week is called Matasanos. Matasanos is in the municipality of Danli in the department of El Paraiso. Go here for more information about Matasanos. 

The first night that I was there I was able to teach the students all about the triage station. I taught them how to take all vital signs and what questions to ask the patients to obtain patient history. Since the brigade coordinator and other staff were busy organizing other stations of the brigade I stayed in the triage station almost all week. This is one of my favorite stations because the students are able to have direct contact with the patients, take vitals and obtain the patient history. Since you are directly communicating with patients in this station you connect with them on a deeper level. Being in this station most of the week also helped me see many health trends in this community which allowed me to ask better questions about the prevalent diseases in that community with the doctors after the brigade. The triage station really helps the doctor consultation run much more smoothly since the doctors can now spend more time diagnosing and less time obtaining the background information for each patient. The students on the brigade did an awesome job picking up on the responsibilities of this station which allowed me to help out at other stations later on in the week.

On the last day of the medical brigade a man from a nearby community cut a major artery in his foot with a machete while he was working in a field near our clinic. The machete was so sharp that it cut completely through the boot he was wearing and caused a very deep cut in the top of his foot. With the help of one of his relatives he was able to make it to our brigade and was sent directly to one of the doctors working with us, Dr. Walter. By the time he got there though he had already lost a significant amount of blood. Normally, we do not see many emergency situations during the brigade due to the fact that patients sometimes have to walk for hours to reach our clinic. Luckily, we always carry an emergency kit and Dr. Walter was able to manage his blood loss and give him an IV to control his dropping blood pressure. Because of instances like this Global Brigades has implemented a Patient Referral Program. Whenever patients have conditions that go beyond the scope of our clinic, the doctors are able to refer them to the nearest clinic and Global Brigades is able to cover the cost of further treatment. This program also works to be able to take any patients from the brigade to the nearest hospital if there is an emergency situation. Once the patient was stabilized one of the Global Brigades drivers was able to drive him to the nearest hospital which was over a 30 minute drive away. Without our brigade being there that day, the patient may have not been able to make it to that hospital. I truly believe everything happens for a reason and I am so happy that we were there that day to take him to the hospital. 

I could talk forever about everything that happened and everything I learned on the medical brigade this week but this post is getting pretty long so I am going to jump right to the last day of the week. I will make a few more posts about the other stations of the medical brigade in the next few weeks so that you have a better understanding of what exactly takes place on these brigades. Since we have started implementing our new medical model students go on a medical brigade for 3 days in the same community and on the fourth day they have the opportunity to go on a pilot brigade with 1 of 4 other Global Brigades programs. Depending on the availability they can choose to go on a water, public health, architecture or microfinance pilot brigade. This week the 4th day option was an architecture brigade. Since the school in Zurzular is almost complete, architecture brigades as began building another school in Santa Rosa I. On this brigade we were able to help finish 6 walls of one of the classrooms of the new school. Like Zurzular, students in this community are only able to go to school through 6th grade. Once this school is complete they will be able to attend school through 9th grade. More information about Santa Rosa I can be found here. The students really enjoyed being able to have a hands on project to work on during the week as well. Their work will greatly impact the lives of all the children in Santa Rosa. All of the students that went on the pilot brigade were very grateful that they were given the opportunity to help build a school rather than go to the tourist city Valle de los Angeles to buy souvenirs. One student said, "this is SO much better than tourism." You could really see the desire in each student to make as big as an impact as possible the week that they were there and a huge impact is what they made.