You have heard the stats on this blog before - babies, and a lot of them, are dying here in Indonesia and around the world just shortly after they were born. The stats I heard recently, said it was one every 3 minutes or almost 500 every day in Indonesia. It is hard though living those stats every day.
There are many things we lack here in Indonesia including equipment, supplies, and in many cases well-trained people. In many cases however that is just because they have not had much training. Education in Indonesia is heavy on the theory and short on the practicing. Our staff have hearts that are eager to serve and a desire to learn.
A couple of weeks ago, our hospital hosted an updated neonatal seminar and workshop for not only our hospital employees but also for staff of government and private clinics and hospitals throughout our province. The main speaker was an Indonesian neonatalogy doctor from Jakarta. It was a great review for me and a great chance for my Indonesian co-workers to learn some of the newer methods and skills for caring for our tiniest patients.
One of the big draws was the opportunity to practice some of the skills like neonatal resuscitation. This has been one of my biggest concerns in observing the care we provide here - I would walk into a delivery room that had no equipment set-up and ready for baby, even though baby was close to crowning and was known to have meconium stained amniotic fluid. Today I walked into the delivery room to find a similar patient story but this time the ambu bag was ready to go and the suction was all set-up! We still have lots of work and practicing to do but it is a big step in the right direction!!
For fun here is a video of the first group to practice neonatal resuscitation during our workshop. They completely failed but in their defense it was an ICU nurse and ER nurse and they don't do many neonatal resuscitations on a regular basis. In the video, they are simulating receiving a premature infant who had just been born by c-section. The baby started off crying but then quickly started grunting with nasal flaring and the oxygen saturation did not increase as it was suppose to, so they should have started giving the baby oxygen but didn't.
One of my goals is to do regular simulations like this with all of the staff, so we know that all the equipment works and it is as routine as possible.
