The purpose of this trip to Malawi is to serve as an instructor for the Native Anesthesia providers of the country. My role will be to help round out their anesthesia knowledge base and help formulate a longitudinal Obstetric Anesthesia curriculum for them. My time there will be spent doing direct clinical instruction and patient care, with the goal of updating them on current OB Anesthesia practices.
Native Malawi anesthesia practitioners, nurses, clinical staff, parturients and their offspring will all be impacted by our care, both in the immediate time frame and for years to come.
Our hope is that increased practitioner education will lead to improved surgical and obstetric outcomes for mothers and their babies. Our goal is to reduce their surgical and obstetric mortality rates and empower them to maintain their anesthesia services without our long-term involvement.
During this trip, I traveled to Lilongwe, Malawi, the country’s capital, to educate Anesthesia trainees at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH). KCH is a state run facility, working entirely off donations and providing free care to its residents. My role was to do afternoon lectures and simulations with the Anesthesia trainees. We focused mainly on obstetric topics, but also Covered a variety of emergency situations with the simulator that we donated, such as transfusion reactions and high spinals. I also had the opportunity to work closely with the anesthesia providers in the operating theaters, where they provided world-class care with very minimal resources. In addition to teaching we also tried to bring them much needed resources, such as laryngoscope handles and blades, ET tubes, LMAs and monitors.
