An Amazing Experience in Nepal

By Heather Brown, MD     I had an amazing opportunity to spend a month working in the ED at Scheer Memorial Hospital in Banepa, Nepal, during my second year of residency. Scheer is a missionary hospital 30 kilometers outside Kathmandu with a six-bed emergency room open 24 hours a day. The ED was staffed with a mix of seasoned western physicians and young Nepali house staff who were mostly recent medical school graduates. There were plenty of chances to make a serious impact, and I was ready to do just that!   Arriving in Nepal I’ve been passionate about international medicine since I was in college, and I couldn’t wait to work in such remote part of the world. I arrived ready for adventure after a 16-hour flight, and Kathmandu did not disappoint. The airport was absolute chaos. I was immediately surrounded by cab drivers trying to overcharge me and vendors selling everything from water to snake oil. I was finally able to find a police officer who directed me to an honest cab driver who drove me to Banepa. We wove through dusty city streets with no lanes and up winding mountain roads next to crowded buses and swerving cyclists. I was sure that I was going to die in the back of that cab, but I somehow arrived at the hospital in one piece.   Dr. Brown in Nepal.   The Emergency Room The patients at Scheer’s ED were not all that different from the patients I was used to in Columbia except the typical gastroenteritis patient in Nepal had typhoid, and t...
Source: Going Global - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs