Teaching and Learning

Today we had another break from the usual pre-surgical cardiac screening and echoing and ventured a bit into Uganda. We woke up and got to the hospital bright and early to start seeing and echoing children with heart disease. We continue to routinely see such extreme, unrepaired heart disease and it can be overwhelming at times.

Anyway, for a break today we went over to the medical school and gave a lecture to the pediatric residents here at Mulago hospital. We're in a room with all of the same kinds of information posted on the walls as our residency programs - various acronyms to remember pediatric diseases are posted on large posterboards on the walls. They are all crowded together waiting for us in a small room, tucked into wooden desks and perched on stools with their pencils and notebooks. I'm a little nervous - I hope that I have something to say that is worth writing down! Anyway, they greet us with smiles and we launch into our lecture on pulmonary hypertension, which went very well. They were very appreciative, and were actually sorry we were leaving! (So are we.)

Later that day we visited one of the patients who had their heart surgery last year while the team was in Uganda in one of the first open heart procedures in all of Uganda. We arrive at his school and surprise him. The children love the visit, and it is incredible to see them in their element, in school at their desks with their uniforms on.