A Snapshot of Our Work
Patient Count: 121
Echo Count: 3
Ultrasound Count: 4
Labs with iStat Machine: 3
Clinic altitude: 13,000 feet
We started the day with a ride over to Kye Monastery and a tour of the monastery in the morning.
We started our clinic in the common area of the monastery, a few floors down, and set up our pharmacy.
We had a few interesting patients today, but I was really excited about a patient that came by my tent with a new heart murmur. We listened to him and I had a sneaking suspicion that he likely had moderate tricuspid regurgitation.
As the students gathered around, I started to get nervous. As I explained to one of them, when I don’t have the ultrasound equipment, it’s a lot easier to be more definitive in my physical diagnosis skills because there is nothing to contradict my assessment. Now with the echo equipment present I’m totally accountable and feel even more pressured to make the correct diagnosis than with physical exam alone!
I predicted we would see moderate tricuspid valve regurgitation and we did indeed see this. But, otherwise, the gentleman happened to be doing fine, so we gave him some reading glasses and sent him on his way.