The devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake destroyed many of the impoverished Caribbean nation’s hospitals, killed a number of its health-care practitioners and drove many more away.
Re-establishing medical care in Haiti has been a challenge for the last five years, and a group of Santa Barbara-area doctors and nurses is hoping to do its part to help.
On Feb. 19, a team of physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists will travel to Haiti to train one hospital’s staff to care for critically ill patients.
The idea of teaching local doctors and nurses in Haiti was immediately appealing to Dr. Jeffrey Fried, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
Fried has been part of short-term medical trips in the past, but he always wondered if he could do more. Last year, he attended a presentation by the group Equal Health, which provides training to doctors and nurses in Haiti.
“I felt like this was an organization I could really get behind, one that wants to train their next generation of medical providers to care for their own communities,” he told Noozhawk.
Fried organized a team that will spend a week at University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti. There, they’ll be teaching a course in the fundamentals of critical care support.
The hospital was built after the earthquake and is run by Partners in Health, a global health organization that works to establish long-term support relationships with sister medical organizations in poor communities.
A critical care unit was added in 2015, but “they don’t have any specialists there,” Fried said, adding that staff training also has been lacking.
In fact, only three of the hospital’s eight critical care beds are being used because the staff has not been adequately prepared.
“We’re hoping to help with that,” Fried said.
He and Diane Barkas, a clinical nurse specialist for Cottage Hospital’s adult intensive care unit, will be leading the trip.
Traveling with them are Drs. Kacie Brumley, Lisa Ferrigno, Connor Johnson and Jason Prystowsky; nurses Maggie Cote and Patti Wicklund; and respiratory care practitioners Kaina Gomard and Mario Guillen.
Nine of the 10 team members are currently working at Cottage Hospital, and the 10th is a former employee, Fried said.
All 10 are paying their own expenses to take the trip, the first time any of them have visited Haiti.
Once in Haiti, the team will be teaching hospital staff how to deal with the most seriously ill patients, including those with respiratory or kidney failures, those who have suffered major trauma, or experienced complications from surgery, gastrointestinal bleeding, drug overdoses and the like.
The course will cover the fundamentals of critical care support, and will take place over the span of five days, accounting for the time needed to have their presentations translated into French.
Lectures and hands-on skills training will take place, as well as some bedside training, according to Barkas.
It’s the same class that Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital has been teaching to new residents at the hospital for the last 12 years.
“It gives them a good foundation of taking care of really sick patients,” Fried said.
Barkas summed up the expectations for the team.
“I’m excited to teach this knowledge to them and pass this on to improve their health care,” she said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
