Angola Medical Mission: First Three Surgery Days

It’s a busy time for IEP in Angola. We have completed three full 12-hour surgery days (leaving little time for blogging). Our returning members have agreed that this mission has been one of our most hard-working missions with IEP. We have averaged five hours of sleep each night, leaving us exhausted by the end of each day.

As it usually is, our first day of surgery in a new hospital was full of challenges. We successfully collaborated with our Angolan partners to determine how to best communicate our processes and needs.

We have had full surgical schedules each day. We have been doing a lot of bony cases here in Angola, which are more complex than soft-tissue cases. The primary deformity we have been treating is club foot, with patients ranging from 18 months to 34 years old.

By our third full day of surgery, we’d learned how to make the operating rooms flow. We have successfully completed 28 procedures on 19 patients so far.

Today, after completing six cases in the morning, we held a second screening to identify the next group of surgical patients. We screened 25 patients and identified 19 for surgery. Most of our patients have been kids (extra cute). We love knowing that we are providing them with more opportunities in life from such a young age.

The Angolan team has done an amazing job of selecting appropriate patients and setting up an operating room environment that has exceeded our expectations to make this mission extremely successful.

From Madison Pribyl, RN