Today was the first day for me to go to the 09 Center. This is a little hard to explain but these are centers that are apparently designed for people with HIV/AIDS infection. Some of the people are quite sick and some I think just don’t have a place to go to. I would say that if this was a hospital and in America a lot of the people would be in some sort of outpatient setting and not admitted. People are not required to stay here but I think that some don’t have a lot of other opportunities. We all wear masks when we go to see patients because TB is so common that it is often and must be treated empirically since with the HIV they can get sick with the TB very quickly. We discussed pain control and treatment management and I spent a lot of time discussing the issue of depression and how to evaluate and treat depression. This was an interesting way to spend time and I like to trying to get the emotional, social and spiritual aspects Palliative Care in the discussion. I think that the 09 center is pretty depressing as a place and I think that we need to focus on how we can make it less depressing.
I was very tired with my trip to Hue and so during the lunch hour I was able to lay down on a bench an take a nap that helped me feel more refreshed.
I was supposed to give a talk about the Balm of Gilead and Safe Harbor. I was able to talk about my work. I spent time talking about the choosing of names and the meaning of the names. It was difficult to explain the metaphorical meaning behind the names I picked. I always wonder how the culture will be able to translate and express the kinds of the mission statements I was presenting.
For some reason I asked if they would like to hear the Balm of Gilead song and then started to sing. There were some pretty big eyes and some applause. I really did not want to just talk about what we did, but how we did things and could I help them figure out how they can do a project for themselves. I decided the PDSA system of Plan Do Study Act was a good tool that people might be able to use. I think that we really need to work on a Vietnamese system of quality improvement and concentration on what is proven by study to be of benefit, and try to concentrate the limited resources on what is really helpful.
On the language front I am trying am now working on sentences. More on that later.
1 comment:
So you sang the Balm of Gilead. How did you make them understand where you got the name from.
We have so much to do to improve the care of people.
With the fast pace world we live in now families don't live close together any more and when some one gets sick there is not always someone to take care of them
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