Friday, August 29, 2014

Ejona Korcari, Week 10, Tirana Albania


My trip to Albania has been a blast so far. At work we have been all the time working non stop. A lot of days we had to work after hours in order to catch up. New people that we had not meet or worked before asked us to do translations from them. Seems like people have been talking about us and now everyone in the building knows we do a nice job and pretty fast. We try our best. I have been improving my communication skills and have improved my english and Albanian. This week we got to attend this conference organized by the Ministries and the Harvard groups that operate in most of them. Harvard students presented the results of their job in Albania. It was really nice to hear the amount of work that got done in such an amazing period of time. Abanian government is being really productive and that is really good for the people. 
Me working at the office


This weekend I didn't get to go with the other girls on a trip to a costal Albanian city because I wasn't feeling really good. Instead I stayed at home. I visited grandma and she took good care of me :). 

Since my blogs tend to be long I never mentioned previously what I get to do during my free time in here. My experience in Albania has been really intense. Except the work at the ministry and traveling with the girls, during my free time I do several other activities. I have been shadowing several doctors at the UHC Mother Teresa in Tirana. I started by shadowing a radiologist doctor. Later she presented me to other doctors that work with her and they all were happy to have me there. This was at the pediatric hospital. I learned how to use the CT-scan and how to do scans of different body parts. I saw and read the interpretation of the doctors for the scans, X-rays, cystographies etc. The doctors and technicians are really nice and they are always answering my questions.
The room from where the CT-Scans are made

Another doctor i shadowed was Prof. Dr. Mentor Petrela (PU-PH Paris). I become part of his team. I got to follow patients pre and post operation, went with him during rounds, spent time in the clinic during patient appointments, had the chance to see how the patient is prepared for the surgery, the protocols and how they checked on them day-by-day after the intervention and much more. Also I had the chance to shadow residents and nurses and learn more about Medical schools in Albania and the education needed to be a Neurosurgeon. I saw cases of aneurysms, hematomas, hernia, traumas, tumors, peripheral nerve problems, emergencies etc. Through imaging techniques like CT-scans, MRI-s, Angio-scans I got to see how some of those cases look like and how we can diagnose those patients. I also got to meet a lot of patients who were really nice to me and let me watch procedures and tests done on them.
Protocols 


Doctors' locker room



One of the floors I did rounds with the team

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