Assessment Day

It’s the day when realty kicks in. The travel is over. Months of planning. Selecting the team. Organising supplies. Fund raising. Today we get to meet our patients. Lessons learned from years of past programs ensure that we can turn potential chaos into a clinical process. It’s a time of hope for the patients. They get to meet the team which will change their life. In the past it was a day of disappointment for some, surgery does not always offer the functionality or the look hoped for. These days, the assessments begin before the team even arrives, as Ram Bhattarai (aka “Max”) searches Nepal for prospective patients. Max emails photos to our senior surgeon, Dr David Pennington, who then advises which ones will make the list. Every day is a team effort – but today is special. Team members take their positions in their stations. Registration, recording clinical stats, photos, surgeon assessment (lots of discussion happening at that table), anaesthetic assessment, informed consent … oh yes the worm tablets, off to get a blood test or x-ray. Then back to the hotel to wait for the day of surgery. Prior to coming to Nepal we had 35 on the list …. by the end of today we had assessed 70!! Assessments done…. let the surgery begin!!