Patience

Oscar and I scrub for team Go Global ... look at our uniforms :-)

Oscar and I are both making the same point here .... look at our hands :-)

We have completed one week of surgery training here in Darkhan. As with previous adventures, the bumps in the road have taught us the most and clarified our goals for the next week. Mostly, it’s about patience ….

There is an urgency in the way our trainees are operating. Quick movements, impatient transitions between tasks, dogged focus on small portions of a goal …. we can work with that, but they need to make some changes.

Oscar and I have repeatedly emphasized that by slowing things down, they will actually be more effective with their movements and ultimately more efficient at completing the operation. We have pointed out the tension planes and more effective ways of retracting. We have repeatedly shifted their focus away from one detail to addressing the bigger operation as a whole. We have emphasized the safe places to work toward the more difficult parts of the case. We have repeated these mantras over and over in hopes that when we leave, they will still hear our voices guiding them through when they are faced with more difficult operations.

Our nursing team has found the same – shortcuts to decrease turn over times ended up being inappropriate solutions that we were able to address. The three hours we spent separating all the instruments and creating new sets will ultimately save them time and be more effective for their continuation of the laparoscopic program.

So here we are, venturing into week two in Darkhan, Mongolia conquering quick movements, impatient transitions, and dogged focus on small details with Patience. It is not lost on me that there is a bigger lesson there. Not lost at all ….