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An ambulance calls the emergency room: car accident victim, possible neck
injuries, multiple cuts and abrasions. Estimated time of arrival: five minutes.
The emergency team prepares for the worst, getting ready a host of medical
supplies that may be needed, everything from syringes to sutures, isolation
gowns to gauze.
But an hour later, the patient has been treated and released with only a
bandage over a minor cut. Many of the supplies have been thrown away. Even
though they weren't used, U.S. safety regulations dictate that medical supplies
designed for one-time use can't be kept for future patients once removed from
their packaging, even if they can be re-sterilized.
Such scenarios are played out each day in emergency rooms across the country,
but not at UNC Hospitals. That's because of Georgine Lamvu-Schooler, a
fourth-year obstetrics and gynecology resident.
Lamvu-Schooler saw all those supplies going into garbage cans and thought of
her native Romania, where hospitals suffer from a scarcity of supplies.
"I went to Romania in February, and I was suturing with fishing thread, nylon.
I had six instruments when I was in Romania," Lamvu-Schooler said.
So instead of filling garbage cans here, why not ship those supplies back home
where they could fill hospital shelves?
She posed the same question to UNC Hospitals administrators in the spring of
1999 as a member of the House Staff Council.
"These are deemed single-use even though people overseas wash them and re-wash
them. They'll just use them and reuse them until they fall apart,"
Lamvu-Schooler said.
After three months of meetings with the hospitals' legal and infectious disease
departments, as well as nursing and distribution personnel, Lamvu-Schooler got
the go-ahead to give birth to MEDWorld, or Medical Equipment for the Developing
World. The non-profit organization collects and donates single-use supplies
that can be re-sterilized to countries that lack basic medical needs.
In July 1999, bins donated by Wal-Mart were placed in UNC Hospitals' operating
rooms, and the collecting began. Syringes, needles, blades, gloves, gowns and
sutures -- all basic medical supplies that can be reused overseas. One nurse,
Marion Cranford, had already been collecting supplies and storing them in her
office before the program began.
"If there are disposable things that can be used in a Third World country and
with safety to these patients, they should be collected," said Robert Cefalo, a
Carolina medical school professor and assistant dean of obstetrics and
gynecology.
The first MEDWorld shipment consisted of two boxes, and MEDWorld volunteers
from the hospital paid shipping costs. But the collection boxes soon were being
emptied two or three times a week, and shipping became expensive.
MEDWorld now works with charities, including Little Samaritan Mission of
Moldova and Operation Renewed Hope, which pay for shipping and let MEDWorld
know how their organization uses the supplies.
MEDWorld also distributes supplies through Global Links, a national
organization based in Pittsburgh that distributes medical supplies collected
from the more than 100 medical charities across the U.S. Local shipping
companies have also provided shipping to MEDWorld at discount rates.
"We're very happy with what we've done so far, and medical [school] alumni gave
us a nice $5,000 grant, and we were able to expand and buy supplies,"
Lamvu-Schooler said. This grant has helped MEDWorld buy larger collection bins,
pay for shipping and expand its collection within the hospital.
Supplies are now collected from operating rooms, labor and delivery, emergency
rooms, sterilization processing and ambulatory care. Lamvu-Schooler hopes to
implement collection in the intensive care unit next.
But collecting medical supplies is only part of the process. Volunteers and
hospital staff spend countless hours sorting, packaging and shipping supplies,
with the MEDWorld disclaimer that all supplies need to be sterilized.
"All these people who work here are fantastic," Lamvu-Schooler said. "If I had
to pick one person or one set of people to thank first, it would be Central
Distribution."
Forty-two volunteers donate time after school or work, and even on weekends, to
help MEDWorld. Patients from the community also donate unused items.
"Individual people realize this stuff is good to use, and there's got to be
somebody in the world who could use it, even if we can't," Lamvu-Schooler
said.
"Our two ultimate goals are to be able to send attending medical doctors and
residents to (work in) the charity of their choice and, hopefully, it's
somebody that we're affiliated with," Lamvu-Schooler said, "because that way it
would be easy for us to send equipment ahead of the team and then just have the
people arrive with nothing but medical work to do."
Donations don't stop with medical supplies. MEDWorld also collects non-medical
supplies, such as tables, desks, chairs and computers that the hospital can no
longer use or sell. Operation Renewed Hope helped furnish a new school in
Africa with used tables and chairs. Non-Y2K compliant computers donated by the
hospital helped Moldova network its government and put some computers in
schools.
While MEDWorld keeps Lamvu-Schooler on the go, she still finds time to donate
her services to other hospital organizations.
"She organized a survey of how many times we needed Spanish interpreters and
where they were needed," Cefalo said. Results from that survey caused the
hospital to increase the number of Spanish interpreters from two to nine.
Lamvu-Schooler is secretary and treasurer of the Hospital House Staff Council,
a hospital group that "work(s) on projects that increase quality patient care
and work effectively for the residents," Cefalo said.
"I can safely say there have been many times when I have woken up, and it was
like 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was on call for like the millionth time in
a row and I've woken up and said, `God, I'm exhausted,' you know, `I'm just
miserable.' But I've never ever woken up and said, `I don't want to be a
doctor.' Never," Lamvu-Schooler said. "I just love the patients. Taking care of
people is the only thing I'm good at, really."
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