Inpatient Department at LFHC
Lao Friends Hospital for Children currently has 20 inpatient beds and sees around 40–60 patients a day. On my first day at the hospital, I went around on rounds with the doctors and nurses as they checked up on the inpatients. Rounds are at 9am every morning and the expat doctors and nurses, Lao doctors and nurses, pharmacists, nutritionist and play therapist goes around to create a plan for the next few days for each patient. Lao doctors will explain the situation of the patient to the group and everyone will provide their input. Usually the expat doctors will explain the overall picture of the disease, how it is normally treated and how it should be treated for the particular patient.
Since the hospital’s main language is English, the Lao staff are not only required to speak English to work at the hospital, but they must also understand all the medical terms and drug names in English. It’s very impressive watching the Lao staff keep up with English explanations, especially because the volunteers are very international and everyone has a different accent speaking in English. Even I have a difficult time understanding our doctors with strong Australian or British accents…but then again I am infamous (within Rakupoops) for not being able to understand non-American accents…
The main diagnosis for hospitalization for the current inpatients are burns, fractured and broken bones, malnutrition, and kidney/ bladder stones. These are specific to Laos and their day to day life. (I’ll explain in more detail in another post.)
Since all the patients are children, either the mother or the father will stay with the child. Often times inpatient families live far away from Luang Prabang therefore the parents cannot go back and forth from home. I was a little surprised to see a lot of fathers staying with their children since men are often the breadwinners of the household. However, the fathers often times take time off of work (office work or farming) to stay with their child, while the mothers stay at home to take care of the other children and maintain the family business.
The hospital has showers, toilets, a communal kitchen and lockers for inpatient families to use. Since our hospital doesn’t provide meals for the patients yet, the families often buy food at our canteen (which is delicious) or they cook at the communal kitchen. There isn’t a lot to do at the hospital or nearby so every time I go into the inpatient ward, the parents and kids look bored and spacey in the heat; there is no air conditioning in the inpatient ward, just really strong fans. Air conditioning at home is extremely rare in Lao households, so I don’t think the heat is a huge concern…but it is still pretty hot.
I noticed that the parents don’t really interact with each other and only a handful of the children play together. Depending on if the patients have infectious diseases, they are isolated from the rest, but it would be nice to have a group activity so that the children and parents can interact with each other.
We do have a play therapist though, to play with the kids and alleviate pain and stress with games and other entertainment, so I sometimes go around with her and make bracelets with the girls and puzzles with the boys. I want to talk with the kids but obviously because of the language barrier, I am limited to communication through charades and other creative hand gestures. So…I decided to take Lao lessons! More of that to come!
