Patient logistics and life on the ward

The ENT patients stay in "Elgon Ward." The pictures above show the building, the central nurses station as you walk in the door, and then there is a women's wing to the left and men's wing to the right.

Patients that are scheduled for surgery will meet in the ENT clinic the afternoon before their scheduled surgery. They collect their charts and then as a group are walked to the ward where they will spend the night. When it is time for their surgery, they will walk to the operating theatres. After the surgery they are taken to a recovery room where they are observed and monitored for a while and then they are taken back to the ward where they will spend at least one more night.

Why do they come the day before and spend the night? I think the main reason is that many travel a long distance and travel is not easy here, so it would not be practical to come the day of surgery. It also prevents no-show problems. Why do they stay at least one night after surgery? Again primarily because of the travel but also because they were under a general anesthetic and it gives them more time to recover. There is talk of allowing some patients to go home the same day in the future but that hasn't happened yet.

At least some of our surgeons do rounds on the ward first thing every morning and last thing in the evening before leaving for the day. They check on the patients, replace dressings where appropriate, and decide who's ready to be discharged. Incidentally, the patient cannot leave until their bill has been paid.

There's no heat or air conditioning in these buildings but it doesn't really matter because the weather is typically so pleasant. There are mosquito nets above each bed. They are pulled up during the day and dropped down at night.

The wards are crowded. There are typically two patients to a bed. If they are both adults, they will be laying down head to toe so that they don't have to be face-to-face in a little twin size bed. If one or both patients are a child they are more likely to be face-to-face. If a patient is a child, that patient will stay in whichever wing matches the gender of the parent that is with them so a boy child will be staying in the women's wing with his mother or men's wing with his father.

Any family members or loved ones that are with the patient have to sort of make room for themselves amongst everybody else. During the day it is common to see a loved one sitting on the edge of a bed adjacent to the patient they are spending time with. So that means that a bed with two patients already on it might have somebody else also trying to sit on it so they can be talking to their loved one in the adjacent bed. It gets pretty darn crowded. Nobody seems to mind the lack of privacy or personal space. That's just the way it is here.