Until last year, Liz Rohrs had always worked in a world where medical staff never said no to anybody.
But that wasn't an option in Haiti, where the Royal Columbian Hospital respiratory therapist volunteered last spring.
In Haiti, Rohrs learned what it was like to let people die because the medical system didn't have the resources or equipment to treat them.
She remembers a man who had been knocked off his motorcycle by downed power lines and come to the Port-au-Prince hospital where she volunteered with major head trauma.
"He had quite an extensive (brain) bleed but something that we could manage quite effectively here," Rohrs told the Record. "They just don't have the equipment, nor do they have the rehab facilities, so we just did not treat him. We just let him die. We made him comfortable. That was the best we could do."
On another occasion she had to hand-ventilate a premature baby for four hours because there weren't enough ventilators to go around.
"We are never in that situation here," Rohrs said. "We always have more equipment than patients need.
Down there it was this constant juggle of, 'OK, who are we going to take it away from to give it to the patient that needs it a little bit more.'"
Tough as the experience was, it was also life-changing, Rohrs said, and she will be back in Haiti next month along with three other RCH volunteers – intensivist Dr. Steven Reynolds and ICU nurses Debbie
Thompson and Michelle Nicholas.
The team is part of a larger 26-member mission from B.C. and Alberta donating its time with Broken Earth, a non-profit originally formed to provide medical assistance to the victims of the 2010 earthquake, but now dedicated to helping rebuild the country's healthcare system.
The RCH team members –who have raised their own funds to cover costs and are donating vacation time – will work side by side with local staff in Port-au-Prince at Bernard Mevs Hospital, Haiti's only trauma, critical care and rehabilitation centre.
Besides treating patients, the team will also educate and "upskill" their Haitian counterparts in best practices as well as provide public health education to the general population.
"I'm looking forward to the education portion," Rohrs said. "We've really beefed that up this year."
Last year, the education she provided mostly came up as she went along.
She remembers treating a woman who had had a tracheostomy – an opening created in the neck for breathing – while her jaw was wired shut after surgery.
"Nobody there quite knew what to do with it," Rohrs said, "so I got to do a ton of education with all the nurses and developed a whole trach protocol for them and typed it all up and placed it. That's stuff that will last, and that patient did really, really well. She walked out of there."
ICU nurse Michelle Nicholas, the only New Westminster resident among the RCH contingent, knows the trip won’t be easy, but there was no hesitation when Rohrs proposed the idea.
"I didn't have to give it a second thought," Nicholas told the Record.
A nurse for 15 years, she said she had long wanted to go on a medical mission.
Besides treating patients, she hopes to leave her Haitian counterparts with the most up-to-date information and skills in her area of focus at RCH: cardiology.
"What you want to accomplish more than anything is just to come back feeling like you helped," Nicholas said. "I'd like to come back feeling that I learned some things, that I was maybe able to teach them some things and that we made life a little bit easier for at least a short period of time."
The Broken Earth mission runs from May 2 to 9.
For more information, or to donate, visit brokenearth.ca/mission-teams/bc.
