This Week at the Hospital

I had my first week at the hospital. It was quite an experience. The hospital is a little creepy and doesn't inspire much confidence in the Mongolian health care system. The hospital is housed in a run down Soviet era building. Please enjoy the photo of one of the operating rooms. It looks more like an experimental facility run by one of the evil X-Men than a real hospital.

Some of the weird, not so sanitary and not so safe things that go on in the hospital.

1) No one wears closed toes shoes (except for me) and most of the women wear heals while performing surgery.
2) Either smoking is allowed inside or the ban is just not enforced. During a surgery, another surgeon strolls in and stands over the patient with a cigarette between his lips.
3) Gloves are simply not popular.
4) Sometimes the doctors lose patients. By this I don't mean that the patients die on the table. I mean that the doctors don't know where they are.

There is a large upside to the ridiculous sketchy-ness of UB's Hospital #3. I watched and assisted 11 surgeries this week. The surgeries included a heart bypass, varicose vein removal, sympathetic nerve repair, a bladderectomy and a hernia removal. The doctors let me do quite a lot in the operating room including ventilating patients during surgery, IVs and preparing medicines. It's awesome.