I will be at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. I am board certified in General Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Medicine. I intend to work alongside Pediatric attendings and residents on capacity building, developing Peds Emergency Medicine educational opportunities for learners and possibly working on refugee screenings. I will be primarily participating in medical education activities (Ultrasound teaching) with Pediatric residents and medical students on the Pediatric Acute care wards.
I will be primarily serving the Pediatric population at Mulago Hospital which is the largest hospital in Uganda with an estimate of 1500 total beds for pediatrics, adults and obstetrics combined. The hospital had an estimate of 61,000 ED visits for adults and pediatrics according the Ugandan Ministry of Health in 2014-2015. The pediatric population is within the scope of my practice.
I am originally from Cameroon in central Africa and completed my medical training in the United States. I currently serve in various global health roles within my institution at the University of Minnesota. I value capacity building, bidirectional partnership and building up education/teaching/mentorship. I believe that interpersonal relationships, team dynamics and the clinical knowledge and skills that will be shared as a team with Uganda colleagues, will also allow for more positive growth as pediatricians for the team members that I will be working with and myself.
The goal of the trip was to introduce basic point of care ultrasound skill with a portable US machine (Butterfly) so that the Mulago pediatric residents could develop more skills in POCUS for a variety of clinical pathology when they see patients on the acute care ward or in other inpatient wards. In addition to immediately serving the Mulago Pediatric pediatric residents, the reach of this project extend beyond them with patients that are served at Mulago. The residents see on average 40-70 patients in the pediatric acute care ward per day. We were able to complete sessions introducing POCUS and had practical applications on patients. We actively continue with virtual monthly educational sessions to continue to build skills and review scans uploaded to the Butterfly cloud.
