Outreach!👩🏻‍⚕️

The past few days, we organized a project for the people in the community: all those who cannot afford a regular doctor's appointment due to cost had the opportunity to get a free check-up today. We had about 7 doctors and quite a few medical students who helped us! In addition to measuring height, weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar, we asked the patients about their biggest problems and gave them medications accordingly. From 8 am to 1 pm, we had over 200 patients; most of them with diabetes, high blood pressure, or stomach pain. However, I held a medical history with a patient who had a visible 2cm aneurysm in her neck (an expansion of a blood vessel). If this bursts, the woman is in danger of losing her life, so we immediately sent her to the hospital! Another case that will stay in my memory is a 45-year-old patient who initially came with abdominal/head/eye/leg pain. Since everything didn't fit together properly, we dug deeper and ultimately found out that the man was severely depressed and had attempted suicide. Unfortunately, we could only refer him to a psychiatrist and couldn't do anything else for him. It was interesting to see that while Ghanaians are very cheerful people, they are rather reserved when it comes to their true feelings. Without our probing, the patient would never have opened up!

In general, all the patients were so grateful for our help and it was a lot of fun! I even got to have my own patients whom I reviewed with a doctor at the end to make sure I asked all the right questions and prescribed the right medications. I think it was very worthwhile and the sparkle in people's eyes is simply priceless!