Getting started for 2023-2024 in Can Tho, Vietnam

This is my 7th trip to Vietnam with the International Extremity Project. I’ve been working with this team for 20 years! Here’s me at Can Tho General Hospital in (yikes!) 2010:

So glad to report that this year’s International Extremity Project group of 32 surgeons, nurses, interpreters, logistics people, all-purpose volunteers, and family members arrived in Ho Chi Minh City from 5 different locations around the world! And all of our surgical and rehab equipment arrived along with us- always a relief!

I spent the first two days with the whole team at Can Tho General Hospital. We always start with a big welcome meeting. IEP has been working with Can Tho General for 25 years. 

I get to put my bossiness and interest in paperwork to good use as a part of the patient intake process. New project volunteer Dan and I worked with Vietnamese surgical residents to set up screening for around 75 potential foot and ankle surgery patients. We created medical records for each patient, organized their x-rays, chased down missing diagnoses and surgical plans, and then passed the information to IEP’s head nurses, Jenni and Madison, for scheduling. 

Around 42 pediatric and adult patients presented with foot and ankle structural problems, injuries, congenital deformities, and other issues that the IEP surgeons and their Vietnamese counterparts decided could be improved through surgeries over the next 2 weeks. Patients’ biggest challenges stem from post-polio syndrome (yes, polio, still), structural differences present at birth that were not corrected early and the resulting damage, and road accidents. 

These surgeries make significant functional changes in the patients lives. We were visited at the hospital by patients that had IEP surgeries from different previous mission trips over the past 20 years, and the shared joy between the surgeons who remember their former patients and the patients who remember the surgeons makes for an emotional time! For details about patients and those surgery decisions, and to follow along with those surgeries over the next two weeks, check the IEP blog at www.extremityproject.blogspot.com . 

I love being a part of the surgery intake process because everyone has a role to play to keep things moving smoothly. From the Vietnamese and IEP medical students and residents who are following their more experienced surgical mentors in patient screening and frantically scribbling notes for diagnostic testing, specific surgery plans, and post-op recommendations, to the IEP volunteers taking photos and video of each patient’s lower extremity issues in action for the surgeons to review, to the IEP “runners” shuttling paperwork between our intake station and the three different screening rooms, to the Vietnamese nurses who shouted out each patient’s name loudly enough to be heard over the busy crowd— all of these people who were previously strangers to each other get into an impressive rhythm to be as efficient and as effective as possible. 

More photos to come! Thank you for all your encouragement and support. Sending you best wishes for the New Year: Chúc mừng năm mới!!