Plastic Surgery

It's plastics time on the Africa Mercy!!! Up until now I've been working as a charge nurse on the wards part time and as the ward nurse educator part time. I've been orienting new nurses to the hospital and facilitating hospital in-services weekly among other things. But now it's time for my role to change. I'm the plastic surgery ward team leader which means I oversee all of the plastic surgery patients in the hospital, the plastics nurses, dressing team and work closely with the surgeons and physio to make sure our patients do well after surgery. I worked as a nurse on the plastics team in Sierra Leone and again in Togo, but this is my first time in a leadership position.

Plastic surgeries began Tuesday and we now have 9 patients on the ward post operative. This has been a slow and somewhat intro week as we only had one of our surgeons here. Tomorrow morning is our BIG plastics screening with our whole team and we are expecting between 50 and 80 patients to show up. After that we will have 5 more weeks of surgery. I am so excited to be leading such a great team and would ask you each to pray as we screen potential patients tomorrow and schedule the rest of our surgical slots. More to come in the following weeks.