Medical mission: Respiratory therapists delivering care in Liberia, Africa

In March of 2014, three VGH respiratory therapists, Ingrid Hakanson, Natasha Mohan and Taryn Millway joined a medical mission to Liberia, West Africa through the Korle-Bu Neuroscience Foundation. We were part of a team that included three neurosurgeons, five nurses, an anesthesiologist, a biomedical engineer, and an administrative assistant. The goal of the mission was to deliver spine and neuro surgeries to the nation of Liberia, and teach supportive care techniques of neurological patients to the medical staff. This would be the first time since before the civil war that the people of Liberia would have access to these procedures.

The three of us worked in a makeshift PAR, weaning post-operative patients off the ventilators and delivering other respiratory care. We held education sessions on oxygen therapy and bag-mask ventilation. We did a LEAN project and set up a shelving system to organize donated supplies. We put together code blue boxes, set up code blue carts, and ran mock codes. We became known as “those respiratory girls that can do anything and never stop moving.”

It is truly a staggering experience to work in an environment so different from North America. It’s difficult to verbalize the beautiful gifts that we took away from this trip. You leave a place where people are so positive and loving in the face of unbelievable challenges and suffering, and it makes you look at your privileged life in a new light.

Many more missions such as this are needed before they will be ready to provide this care on their own. It will be a long road, but we realized that we had accomplished what we went there to do when President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf met us personally and said, “You came to help our people with medical problems, but you also made them feel valued, and that sometimes means more.”