Teaching in Myanmar

Ian Moore is a highly competent and experienced ICU Nurse and has been on over ten Open Heart International (OHI) trips. When back in Australia, Ian is a ICU Unit Manager and his work life is normally in a meeting, or at a desk behind a computer. Hence, he relishes the opportunity to get ‘hands on’ time and get involved clinically with patients.

During this recent Open Heart International trip to Yangon, Myanmar, Ian was stationed to guide and teach in the Yankin Childrens Hospital ICU, which was performing adult cardiac surgery all week. When a person undergoes cardiac surgery in theatre, their next destination is as a patient to ICU, where all of their bodily systems can be closely monitored, and supported, until they become good enough to cope on a normal hospital ward.

The local Burmese ICU Nurses and Registrar Doctors loved Ian! His verbal deliveries were put across clear and simple, but with Aussie humour. They wanted him to teach and talk all day. Well they loved him until realising he’d scrawled a lecture with a permanent marker all over their illuminated x-ray screen, which took hours to remove!

The day I visited Ian in the Childrens Hospital ICU, I was intrigued by the portable radiography session. Most ICU patients have an x-ray every day to monitor their lungs and any signs of bleeding in their chest and abdomen cavities. Why was I intrigued? Other than the portable x-ray machine being a different type to those in Australia, it was that a man had to stand directly behind the patient holding a plate for the x-ray. Moreso, that every single practictioner, doctor and nurse, didn’t stand away from the x-raying, but ran out of the intensive care unit completely!

I have to confess, I know Ian Moore well and usually share a hotel room with him, when on an OHI trip. He is a relaxed and easy going fellow to get along with. Our biggest bone of contention is that he loves the air conditioner set at 18 degrees celcius. Brrrr. Help! I’m sharing a room with an eskimo!

Project Coordinator, Chris Waite, humorously suggested that “just because you write the blogs Warwick, it doesn’t mean you should put so many images of yourself in them. It’s not all about you!” Chris is a funny boy. Well readers, it’s pertinent to the story, and who wouldn’t want to see the work station of the best dressed blogger in Yangon?! The reason the blogger is wearing his duck pajamas with a suit coat in balmy hot Yangon, is that it is 0600 in the morning and a good chance to write, and the room is so damn cold.

I’m going over the top now, and will include one more pic of the blogger (me). In this pic above, I am being consoled by Paediatric ICU Nurses, Amy Kate Tilley and Jane Healy, while Noni McNamara ‘invades’ my computers to create power point lecture for later in the day. On this particular morning, I had my breakfast cut in half and was dragged away to supervise the Paediatric invaders. Only just recovering now (joke). For those who haven’t been on an Open Heart International trip, the morning is a similar flurry of activity, just like one’s working life at home. Each morning, its get up and dressed, eat breakfast, and be ready standing in the hotel foyer by 0830 each morning, for your pick up transport to take you to your assigned hospital.