Bed Baths & Beyond

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Today was another full day in the trauma unit! However, today started off a little different because we had the opportunity to observe a few surgeries as soon as we arrived. We shadowed a thyroid surgery, spinal tumor removal surgery, and the removal of a peritoneal dialysis catheter! The Thai doctors spoke very good English, and it was great to communicate with them and ask them questions. They are so smart and know so many English medical words. Another Thai doctor, a neurosurgeon took us to the Trauma ICU unit to round on a post-motorcycle accident patient who was sadly about to pass. We looked at his CT scan to see that the trauma to his head caused brain death. This was very sad to see.

In the step-down trauma unit, where I shadow, we had a tourist patient from another country. Although it was very refreshing to hear fluent English language, I felt very bad about the situation. The patient is in Thailand vacationing with friends before being severely injured on a motor cycle. The patient is now in a strange Thai hospital with a chest tube, severe bruising, and multiple rib fractures. The patient was having huge difficulty trying to get transferred to a private hospital, figuring out foreigner insurance, contacting family members, and trying to understand broken English accents from the Thai nurses.

After lunch, we did some bed baths and had a nice break to play with the burn unit children again! The 2 and 6-year-old definitely brightened our long day with their cute and contagious laughter! After this, we went to see another burn unit patient whose condition was not as cheerful. This poor man had bone-deep burns on both of his feet that fused his toes and ligaments together. We observed the nurse do a dressing change on a wound vac dressing! The man was in horrendous pain, even after 3mg of Morphine! All I could do was hold his hand to try and give him some sort of comfort during the painful procedure. I’ve seen some pretty difficult conditions and procedures, but this one was by far the worst to watch.

I really enjoy working in the Trauma unit, but sometimes it can be difficult to understand their view of nursing care or the reason why they do certain skills. I have to keep reminding myself that the Thai hospital has less resources than we do, and therefore they need to adapt to their circumstances.

After today’s clinical we had a Pork Pan dinner with all our buddies!! This was one of my favorite parts of the trip so far because we all bonded, laughed, sang songs with the guitar, played games, cooked dinner and roasted s’mores! Our Thai buddies have been teaching us so many things about their culture, so it was really fun to teach them how to make s’mores!

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