An Addenbrooke’s emergency doctor, who fled Syria as a medical student in 2012, has just returned from Ukraine where he helped treat those fleeing from the war.
Doctors with life-saving Cambridge healthcare charity angry after government funding cuts cambridge-news.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cambridge-news.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Major trauma: rehabilitation stage
The nurses had little or no experience of skills-based or simulation training. We introduced the idea of simulation learning and ran interactive skills stations where the nurses could practise cardiopulmonary resuscitation, defibrillation and basic airway manoeuvres.
The feedback we collected from the participants was overwhelmingly positive and improvements in their reported confidence in the various skills were significant.
We gathered data examining both the characteristics of the ICU and the journeys and experiences of trauma patients. Over one month we conducted a daily audit of the ICU, examining occupancy, staffing, treatments and the characteristics of admissions. We also studied the records of every trauma patient admitted during the month and followed them through until discharge from ICU. Both projects revealed information that will help direct the work of the partnership in the future.
Surviving birth
Valente Inziku, whose wife Jennifer died in childbirth in Arua, Uganda (photography: Tadej Znidarcic)
Researchers at one of the busiest maternity hospitals in the world aim to help more women survive complications giving birth.
Obstetrician Dr Annettee Nakimuli and colleagues look after up to 28,000 births a year at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.
Every day, 300 pregnant women visit the hospital antenatal clinic. Around 100 women are on the labour ward, and 40 of these will have complications – obstructed labour, haemorrhage, sepsis or pre-eclampsia – requiring up to 25 emergency caesarean sections to be carried out.
“When women come to the labour ward they hope to come out with the best of it – they hope to come out with a live baby, and come out alive themselves. But women go to hospital with mixed feelings – they’ve seen others die before them, so there’s a tendency to think of maternal death as something inevitable rather than avoidable,�