by Greg Sund
It seems like lately I have been surrounded by dummies. No, not my teammates. I mean mannequins. Big ones, little ones, they are everywhere. That is because I have been teaching a “Réanimation” course for the medical students. I could not imagine teaching Réanimation without teaching basic life support skills, such as CPR and assisted ventilation. So, after digging through a container of donations from Samaritan’s Purse, I came across a large pile of dummies, which I have brought to the hospital for use in teaching the medical students these life-saving skills. I have also learned that if you are going to carry a full sized child mannequin (fully dressed) to the hospital, you probably should not carry it on top of a bunch of other boxes and then proceed to drop it repeatedly. I was met with some looks of horror by Burundian women passing by. I don’t think they had ever seen a mannequin before and thought it was a real child, perhaps my child (it was also white).
It seems like lately I have been surrounded by dummies. No, not my teammates. I mean mannequins. Big ones, little ones, they are everywhere. That is because I have been teaching a “Réanimation” course for the medical students. I could not imagine teaching Réanimation without teaching basic life support skills, such as CPR and assisted ventilation. So, after digging through a container of donations from Samaritan’s Purse, I came across a large pile of dummies, which I have brought to the hospital for use in teaching the medical students these life-saving skills. I have also learned that if you are going to carry a full sized child mannequin (fully dressed) to the hospital, you probably should not carry it on top of a bunch of other boxes and then proceed to drop it repeatedly. I was met with some looks of horror by Burundian women passing by. I don’t think they had ever seen a mannequin before and thought it was a real child, perhaps my child (it was also white).
My teammate George has graciously opened up his office to myself and some of the other “office-less” doctors, however, I have recently sensed some regret from this decision, as I have started to leave these mannequins strewn about his office. The full sized child mannequin has actually terrified quite a few people as they walked into his office. Thankfully we now have a working defibrillator just a few hundred yards away.
The students have seemed to really enjoy learning these skills, something that few of them have been exposed to before. Last week we worked on adult CPR and ventilation and today Alyssa led a class on Helping Babies Breath (complete with more creepy dummy babies). Some of our middle schoolers have even jumped in to help with translating and also doing some CPR teaching themselves! It has been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. Soon, the mannequins will have to return to the deep dark hole from whence they came. But fear not (George), they will return (to your office) next fall, when the new group of medical students arrive (or sooner, if I get bored).
1 comment:
This is a hoot! Hats off to the middle schoolers who are helping out so much!
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