Technical Visit

9 January 2009

As I was back in Kupang and if I had gone straight back to Rote would only manage 4.5 hours work this week I decided to visit RSUD Kupang - Rumah Sakit Umum Daerah - District General Hospital. This is where our patients go if they agree to be transferred for more specialist treatment. The hospital has 324 beds and 400 nurses. There are about 200 out patients and 150 A&E visits per day. They had a neonatal unit and high care baby unit – although there are incubators they have not got ventilators and realistically can only expect babies of 37 weeks gestation or more to survive. The nurses here were giving total care to the babies. There are children’s wards based on the class of the patient, delivery and maternity wards. There are adult surgical and medical wards. There are two a VIP pavilions with 17 rooms that had a waiting list of 15 patients – I was shown the room of a patient from Rote – it was very nice and far superior to our VIP rooms. They have a large polyclinic which appeared to include a nurse led TB treatment clinic. There is a haemodialysis unit treating 10 patients a day 6 days a week. The A&E was busy and they have a brand new ITU, HDU and theatre complex. I only visited the ITU – this would have done justice to any Western hospital. We met up with Sam for lunch. I went back to the nursing department via the medical records where I was given copies of all the nursing assessment forms. I was invited back to do a longer technical visit with collegues from RSUD Baa.