During my trip to Malawi, I will serve as a supervisor and instructor for the native Anesthesia providers of the country. My role will be to help round out their anesthesia knowledge base, help formulate a longitudinal Obstetric Anesthesia curriculum for them, and supervise our visiting anesthesia residents and fellows.
My time there should help update their anesthesia practices with the intention of improving their surgical outcomes. Our goal is to help reduce their surgical and obstetric mortality rates and empower them to maintain their anesthesia services without our long term involvement.
The population that will be served by this project includes the patient population of the capital of Malawi (Lilongwe) and its surrounding communities as well as the Anesthesia Providers of their hospital. This population has a high surgical and obstetric mortality due to lack of resources as well as a scarcity of fully trained providers.
Our anticipated impact is that the native anesthesia providers will be able to continue an updated model of anesthesia services after we leave. Additionally, they will be able to enact changes in their practices that can help reduce their surgical and obstetric mortality rates.
During my time in Malawi, we focused on teaching their Anesthesia trainees the basics of anesthesiology and also instructed them on how to use a patient simulator to practice handling inter-operative emergencies. I believe our trip impacted the trainees by helping to round out their foundation of anesthesia knowledge. The trip also impacted me by introducing me to the world of low resource anesthesia.
