Day 3 - hospital observations

Hey travel journal,
Another full day today. Got up at 7am and headed out to the traditional breakfast vendor. Today we had another scallion with the naan like bread with egg and I also had a black tea and dragon fruit. Then we jumped back on the bus to the private memorial hospital for day two of our observations. First up we split into our groups and we started in the surgical ICU. After dressing up in our gowns and masks we had an introduction to the ward. There are 18 beds, with 9 nurses, 2 specialists nurses and doctors. Most of the patients are intubated and a number had inter cranial pressure monitors that get implanted below the skull. The patients each have a bed monitor but they only have one defibrillator and 12 lead ecg machine for the whole ward. They have patients that have undergone a wide range of surgeries, from ortho, head trauma, stroke, cardiac, etc. Pretty much any surgical patient that requires intensive care, and have an average eof 21 day stay. If these patients then require a potentialluly difficult intubation then they are then transferred to the respiratory ward. Then we headed over to the medical ICU. Where they are the surgical ICU equivalent but for any medical case. The two biggest things they treat are haemodialysis and pneumonia, but they also have an isolation for SARS and TB. They also have a critical care section with 6 beds and only specialist nurses. They are apparently at full capacity 80% of the time. They are superstitious so the same as they don't have level 4, they don't have beds number 4 and they have a month over july/august where they have less patients that they see because they call it 'ghost month' where they believe that the discharge rate reduces if your admitted to hospital during this time so they tend to avoid medical care. After the wards we headed back out onto the streets in search of food. We walked through the local markets and I ended up getting a melon tea and some rice noodle and tofu soup dish that was amazing. No idea whats its called but it was tasty. After lunch we had a presentation about the pharmacy in the hospital. They have 81 pharmacists and despense around 4000 medications (both in and out patients) per day. That's insane. They also have the last say, so if they don't agree with the doctors order due to potential drug interactions or what ever reason they can over ride the decision which is interesting. I wonder if that's the same at home? Then we went and had a look in the pharmacy which was honestly just a big room set up like a warehouse with boxes and boxes and shelves and shelves of drugs. They also had a pressurised clean room for some drugs and compounding, as well as fridges for those drugs that require refrigeration. They we went up to the chemotherapy ward and saw the patient receiving outpatient chemotherapy and had a look in their pressurised clean drug room. Once we had done that we headed over to the incubation unit. I'm gonna be honest I expected to see like a nic-u ward. But nope, it was actually a building were they conduct research, not unlike MERF. We had a brief overview and they talked about the five main areas of research they conduct which is primarily cancer research from what I understand including urology, cardiovascular, orthopaedic, serology and metastatic. (if I remember properly). We then had a talk by one of the researchers who went through his study looking at genetic markers and using the bodies own rna that I'd taken and modified to attack the tumour cells and then reinfected back into the patient. Which is having some success but also has the big negative side effect that it may attack all of the bodies cells and increase the rate of cancer growth. But really interesting and if they can isolate the exact DNA or RNA mutation that causes cancer and make the body attach it like a virus instead of through the use of chemotherapy then that's going to be amazing. Next we went and had a tour of one of the labs which wasn't very big but had a lot of benches and machines squished in. The researcher in charge of the lab is looking and osteosarcs as a metastasis and how to help reduce the prevalence. So for example bone cancers start when osteoblasts and osteoclasts fall out of balance. He is looking at if there are hormones that are produced by cancer patients that result in osteo secondary cancers and if there is a way to keep the bone environment in balance to help prevent or reduce the rate of osteosarcs from forming. The third researcher talked about his study of the major properties of blood and how the introduction of an anti platelet drug can help increase reprofusion in ischaemic patients to help reduce reprofusion injuries. Once we finished at the lab most of us headed to the train and went into the city centre and checked out the highest building in Taiwan. The 101 building is 101 floors high and has pretty awesome architecture with a mixture of modern and tradition. We took some photos and sat around in a park just talking and relaxing for ages. The we headed over to a small (1.5km worth of stairs!) mountain after a quick toilet stop to climb to the top. Omg it was a challenge, I'm so unfit, and my knee was started to get niggle because my legs hurt so much. But our buddy mark stayed with me and chatted the whole slow process But the view from the top was absolutely amazing and totally worth it. The city lights at night were super pretty. After heading back down the mountain we caught a couple of trains to another part of the city and we went to this restaurant for dinner. So by this point we were all starving being 9pm and we hadn't eaten since 1pm and climbed a bloody mountain. But the buddies ordered a shit load of food for us and put them on the table for every one to share. Omg the food was amazing! We had tofu, vegis, calamari (the real stuff), prawns with pineapple and prawns with nuts, colon, stinky tofu, pork and vegis, miso soup, egg plant and seriously probably more there was just sooo much food. But with a sparkling apple drink and sooo much tasty food it was totally worth the I feel sick full feeling. After a group photo at dinner and a couple of trains home, I through on some washing while. I got ready for bed. And now I'm in bed and I'm gonna pass out cause we have an early one tomorrow. Night xoRead more