Work and healthcare

I will leave Simon to write about his work but will tell you a bit about mine. When Simon was originally offered the job here I was invited to apply for a nursing post . I didn't want to be too tied down at first so applied for bank nurse rather than regular full or part time hours. Acouple of weeks after we arrived I had a phone call asking me to go into the hospital the following afternoon, I was expecting a formal interview, with considerable trepidation as I have not worked in a hospital setting for 30 years but it was a very informal chat and a look around.
The hospital is actually unusually well staffed at the moment so I have only had a few shifts so far but I manage to keep well occupied with other things. I still feel very inexperienced and out of my depth at times but there are always other trained nurses on duty.

The hospital in Stanley provides all the health and dental care for the islands. The doctors provide a GP service and also staff the hospital and there is a general surgeon and an anaethetist. Three of the nurses are also midwives and they each have their own caseload so women have the same midwife throughout their pregnancy, delivery and post-natal care. There are also a district nursing team, health visitor, physiotherapist, radiographer, pharmacist, pathologist and community psychiatric nurses based at the hospital.

X ray facilities are shared by the vetinary department so apparently dogs and cats may be seen going in but the portable X ray machine is usually taken outside for horses! X rays are taken digitally and can be transferred to UK for advice from a specialist.

There is one 28 bedded ward which covers everything including surgery, medicine, trauma, paediatrics, geriatrics, maternity and mental health. At one end there is a 7 bedded elderly care section (where I feel very at home), there is a 2 bedded intensive care room, 1 isolation room, a 1 bedded maternity room and the rest is 1, 2, 4 and 6 bedded bays.

As well as catering for the local population and contract staff the hospital serves the military and visiting fishing boats and tourists so you never know what might come in. The ward staff also cover casualty and some of the nurses run specialist clinics like diabetes and asthma. The tourist season is just starting and apparently we get quite a lot of patients from the cruise ships (particularly elderly Americans with medical problems). Many of the fishing boats are staffed by people from the far east who are often poorly nourished, prone to TB and may have tropical diseases.

We have various specialists who visit every year or two such as a psychiatrist, an orthopaedic surgeon, a gynaecologist, an ear nose and throat surgeon, an opthalmologist and an optician so they may do quite a bit of surgery when they are here. The doctors here have links with different hospitals in UK for backup in different specialities.

The surgeon here only does relatively minor operations (caesarian sections, appendixes etc). Anyone requiring more major surgery or high tech investigations or treatments is sent overseas, usually to Chile or UK. Also anyone critaically ill is usually transferred out. There is a firm who fly in from Chile with a medical team and equipment to the international airport at Mount Pleasant. They are then brought to Stanley by helicopter, which lands on the football field opposite the hospital. The patient is then tramsferred to their care and taken to the helicopter by the landrover ambulance.

The ambulance here is driven by one of the hospital drivers/porters/security men and if it goes out a nurse and sometimes a doctor go with it to care for the patient. One of the nurses also goes if a patient is to be collected by plane or helicopter.