Medicine in Ghana

My placement with Projects Aborad was at Central Regional Hospital in Cape Coast and my first day was awesome. I got the tour around the hospital like everyone does. The fun part of my day happened when we got to the operating room during my tour. I got sucked in with some medical school students and got to watch an appendectomy! The surgeon was a Bulgarian doctor who has been in Ghana for more than 4 years. He explained everything about the procedure and let me come in close to see the perforation of the appendix. That was my first day and it just got better from there.

I was in Ghana for a total of 4 months and I chose to spend most of my time in the Surgery Department. A doctor on ward duty basically had to stay in the surgical wards and do anything that was needed from putting in catheters and NG tubes to washing burn victims. This is when I got my most hands-on experience because less people were around. I got to do many awesome things, as odd as some of it may sound. I helped bath burn victims, dressed wounds, gave a rectal exam, put in IV lines, drew blood for analysis, and assisted in a minor surgical procedure. For example, one time a doctor that was supposed to assist could not be reached so Dr. C asked the nurse to get me a gown and gloves. We had to put in a suprapubic catheter into an old man who had an obstruction that wasn’t allowing him to release the urine from his bladder. He was too old to have an operation so they decided to put a catheter directly into his bladder through the abdomen. Dr. C made a small incision and then clamped the catheter tube with a forcep. He handed it to me and told me to push down as hard as I can until I felt a rip. Skeptical, but definitely willing, I did as I was told. I pushed and urine began to flow out through the tube and into the bag, much to Dr. C’s satisfaction. He showed me how to do a proper stitch then allowed me to do the remaining few stitches. This was probably the most hands-on, doctor-like experience I had while I was in Ghana and it definitely confirmed my desires to go into surgery.

Aside from the hospital, I also went on medical outreaches to villages and schools about once a week. We provided minor health services by treating ringworm, small infections, cuts and wounds, etc. This weekly experience helped me to apply a lot of the things I learned while at the hospital, and one weekend, a bunch of volunteers went to a rural village in Assin Praso to have our own one-day health clinic where almost 200 village people came.

Every week I also got a chance to do something outside of the medical-related area. On Tuesdays we took the kids from New Life Orphanage to Han’s Cottage to swim in the pool and see crocodiles in the nearby lake. They were the sweetest kids ever and they even gave me a tearful goodbye ceremony on my last day with drumming, dancing, poem-reading, and singing.

Needless to say, my experience in Ghana is one that can’t be fully expressed in mere words. All I can say is that I gained so much from this trip. Educationally, I learned a tremendous amount about medicine and the practice of human care. However, my gains were not limited to the educational benefits, because I also created so many memories that have changed me in some way through the different people, culture, and ideas that really defined my experience and every time I think back to my time in Ghana, that’s what I remember. And I thank Projects Abroad for giving me that experience.