Tadaaahhh!

This post is dedicated to the student project that Prosperity and I have created in hopes of bettering the communication among the appropriate staff at Ilula Lutheran Hospital. Throughout our time at the hospital, which expanded to approximately three weeks, we have realized a flaw within the hospital regarding laboratory test availability and lack of communication regarding this issue.

When Prosperity brought up this issue at one of our discussion meetings, we had decided to brainstorm ideas for resolving this issue within the communication process. Specifically, we had discovered that some staff members (clinical officers, doctors and nurses) were not fully aware of all of the laboratory tests that were offered at the hospital. Among that issue, we became aware that many of the lab tests that normally are available were not able to be measured due to various issues (reagent out of stock or unavailable, machine broken, etc). Therefore, much of the staff were not aware of the lab tests that were or were not available. During inpatient rounds, we had observed that certain labs would be ordered, then the following day would not have been completed. After much questioning, we discovered that certain lab tests could not be completed due to both reagents being out of stock and the machine to run certain tests was broken. Therefore, the communication system between some medical staff (doctors, clinical officers and nurses) and the laboratory staff was flawed.

In order to get a better idea of how this issue could be resolved, we decided to talk to Emmanuel, the District Laboratory Manager, to hear his opinions regarding the issue. Fortunately, he was able to find some time in his busy schedule to meet with us and the Ilula Laboratory Manager, Naftal. We discussed the problems that we have noticed in our time at the Hospital. Both Emmanuel and Naftal agreed that this communication gap was largely a “failure in system tracking” that needed to be resolved for the betterment of the hospital and staff. After a very informative meeting with Emmanuel and Naftal, we decided that we had enough information to kick start our project with approval from them. This project was completed with the understanding that it would be easy enough to update on a weekly basis and continue after we had left the Hospital. Prosperity came up with the brilliant idea of creating a board called, “laboratory testing availability.” The idea of the board is to not only have all the available lab tests at the hospital, but also have the information regarding stocking (in/out of stock) and any other important information (example, CD4 – out of stock – reagent out). This white board can be easily updated weekly and can be presented to the medical staff during morning report. We are very excited to present this project to Emmanuel and Sovelo, the medical officer in charge at Ilula Hospital. This project will hopefully bridge the gap in communication between the laboratory staff and the rest of the medical staff and it is amazing to have Emmanuel and Naftal happily on board with it.