I will go to two sites in Indonesia (Jarkata and Bandung) to do an observational rotation at two large academic institutions to assess the current status of there Interventional Radiology programs and to help develop a longitudinal relationship between these hospitals and RAD-AID -Interventional Radiology. I will work with my attending supervisors to give lectures and hold hands-on workshops to teach the physicians and trainees. We will also provide an initial assessment of the current IR capabilities and needs at each of these sites to help identify ways for continued improvement with future RAD-AID trips.
Populations of Bandung and Jarkata, Indonesia. More specifically the populations served by two large academic, public hospitals in these cities.
The goal is to help develop a strong IR training program at these academic hospitals that will provide training to many generations of future Indonesian Interventional Radiologists that they can then bring IR to other parts of the country. As the first team to go, we will developing a longitudinal relationship between RAD-AID IR and these institutions so that future RAD-AID teams can continue to work to help develop these programs over time. Additionally, this relationship will allow for Indonesian IR trainees the opportunity to rotate through my home institution at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital and Medstar Washington Hopsital Center.
I had an amazing two week experience working with RAD-AID at two different hospitals in Indonesia. One was an academic hospital in Bandung, Indonesia where I gave daily lecture about various topics in IR, participated in read outs with the radiology residents, and observed the IR procedures. I was also traveling with a Canadian CT/X-ray technologist so we reviewed the CT and X-ray protocols and helped developed standardized protocols for the hospital to use to improve the quality of the images more consistently. We then went to Jarkarta to the University of Indonesia teaching hospital where we did similar work. There they had a more robust IR practice so there was alot more IR procedures to observe. I gave an hour long lecture on the role of IR in the setting of acute trauma. Overall the experience was great and I felt like I learned just as much as I taught. In general the state of IR in those two hospitals was pretty good and the practicing physicians were well trained, however, they were severely limited by lack of funding. Both hospitals are government hospitals and so a large amount of the patients have the the national health insurance which is severely underfunded. This limits the role of IR as the hospital administrators do not allow for the use of many IR devices or procedures despite a large needs. For example in Jarkarta the attendings were only allowed to use two coils per embolization procedure even if this means that the procedure may not be complete. It is a shame to see such well trained doctors be limited to helping their patients do to lack of funding. I believe significant lobbying of the government is needed to increase funding and show the hospital administrators that high quality IR care will actually decrease cost in the long run.
