Health Conference

On Friday June 17, I joined other healthcare staff of the hospital for a conference in Accra, the capital of Ghana. This was a Methodist health professionals conference and since the Ankaase hospital was founded and is being managed by the Methodist Church, it seemed appropriate for representatives from the hospital to attend. The Ghana Methodist Health System consists of 2 hospitals and 19 clinics.

The conference was scheduled to begin at 9am and Accra is 5 hours south of Ankaase so the hospital decided to get a bus and shuttle us to the conference. We were told the bus will be leaving from the hospital at 3:30am.

Fortunately (I’m being sarcastic), I did not have electricity in my house so I decided to wake up at 1am and get ready.  Electrical outages are common occurrences here. It was also raining furiously at the time. We are currently in the rainy season and it rains almost every day. Because of the rain and the darkness on the dirt road leading from my house to the hospital, I called and asked if the hospital driver could pick me up. Thankfully, he could. So at 3am he picked me up and we headed to the hospital to wait for the bus. It didn’t arrive until 5:30am. We departed as soon as the bus arrived.

We arrived in Accra at 10:30am. The conference had begun forty-five minutes prior so we hurriedly registered and joined the participants. The presiding bishop (head of the Ghana Methodist church) was present in addition to other dignitaries. The guest speaker, Dr. Stephen Adei, gave a wonderful message about being ambassadors for Christ even as healthcare professionals. We had a breakout session where we were divided into seven groups and presented with current problems facing the Methodist health system. We were then tasked with coming up with ideas to help solve some of these issues. Scarcity of resources and lack of government insurance reimbursement seems to be a common problem across the health system. The national insurance system hasn’t paid for claims in over 7 months. It’s a miracle some of these clinics and hospitals are still operating. We had a small lunch after the event, departed at 5:30pm for Ankaase and arrived at 10:30pm.

Some of the participants at the conference.

I gave a short training on transporting patients to the members of the ambulance team at the Ankaase hospital today, Monday June 20. The ambulance team consists of five registered nurses who have been trained in emergency transportation of transferred patients. Most of the patients the team members deal with are critically ill individuals who are transferred to the tertiary hospital for advanced care.  The tertiary hospital is located in Kumasi, about 40 minutes from Ankaase. We hope to build a robust system of patient transport through training and capacity building. 

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