Hello all!
My name is Chirag Patel, a junior here at Drexel. I will soon be embarking on a journey to a hospital in Bwiam, Gambia called the Sulayaman Junkung General Hospital (SJGH), along with Andrew (who will be joining me in a few weeks). SJGH is a 200 bed health facility serving a population of approximately 100,000 people. It is located in a village called Bwiam, about 3 hours outside of Banjul. Some of the challenges that the hospital is currently facing include: shortage of doctors and trained staff, shortage of electricity, limited access to educational resources and technical information, lack of biomedical equipment and more importantly, the absence of a qualified biomedical engineer. Due to the inability of the minimally-trained maintenance team to handle imported medical equipment, there is a genuine need for a biomedical (clinical) engineer capable of facilitating the installation, restoration, and maintenance of the equipment, as well as promoting sustainability through training workshops. We will be serving as the hospital's clinical engineering for a period of two months. Our responsibilities include:
· Conduct a thorough assessment of the hospital’s medical equipment inventory
· Supervise and train staff on medical equipment
· Facilitate installation, restoration, and maintenance of equipment
· Create user and service manuals for staff to reference
· Develop a protocol for broken equipment management
· Develop standard operating procedures (SOP) for equipment
· Assist local health professionals with community health initiatives such as workshops on hygiene, disease transmission, etc.
We both have been training with faculty and staff in the Biomed department so that we are able to complete our objectives to the best of our ability. We have been trained in basic electronics, ultrasound, EEG, sphygmomanometers, and other medical equipment (including autoclaves, centrifuges, oxygen concentrators, incubators, etc.). In addition, we shadowed several biomedical engineers at Lankenau hospital, who have also been on similar trips. The engineers at the hospital have given us a general overview of the equipment we may encounter there. Throughout the training, we learned how to efficiently and effectively trouble shoot so that we can identify and resolve issues with the equipment there. The training will prove to be invaluable to our trip, and we are very thankful to everyone who has put time aside for us. I, personally, am very excited for this trip, and will write more once I arrive in Africa!
