Luke and Lesley’s Excellent Samoan Adventure

BY LUKE HUSBY, MD, & AND LESLEY OSBORN, MD   Ten hours of air time and three cities later, we arrived in the Honolulu airport to be greeted by the Samoan travelers who would be guiding us around Samoa.        Once we arrived in Pago Pago in American Samoa, we hit the ground running with a quick trip to the supply cache at a nearby pastor’s house. After a few hours of sorting, we were ready for the week with the pharmaceuticals, bandages, durable medical equipment, and other supplies that we’d need.   Each plane had a weight limit, and there was only one plane with 31 volunteers. The plane made multiple trips to get the entire crew from one island to the next. With the supplies sent, we took the ferry to Savai’i, Western Samoa.   After the 45-minute ferry ride, we drove to our first mission site, and began seeing the loads of patients waiting for us in Taga. Some kinks had to be worked out during the first day of medical clinic, but we quickly became a machine with various clinical stations, including four practitioners with segregated workspaces made up of church benches, chairs, and walls of tablecloths, all of which were set up in the local community’s church fale. We had two triage tables where blood sugar, medical history, and vitals were documented before the multitude of patients waiting outside were seen.     We also had a staging tent for those waiting to be triaged. On day one, we saw about 200 patients. We were setting up for, traveling to, or r...
Source: Going Global - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs