Village Outreaches

I was lucky enough to be able to go on a total of 9 village outreaches during my time in Uganda. We were able to do this because a large group of dentists from Canada came and sponsored a full 8 days of outreaches to different villages. The village outreaches are a lot busier than normal days at the clinic and we get to see a lot more patients with a lot more diverse health conditions.

While on outreaches, we each sit with on of the PAs while they take patient consults in the general clinic area. We sit with them while they listen to the patient’s complaints and take their medical histories. The PAs translate and describe to us what is going on and then give a diagnosis and decide on a treatment plan. A lot of the cases were easier to diagnose because they were more common, like peptic ulcer disease and urinary tract infections, but others were more complex. For example, a 20 year old woman came in with symptoms of stroke, she stopped speaking a month earlier and began experiencing right-sided weakness around the same time and had high blood pressure. This case was interesting because her age was not an indicator for stroke, but the PA sent her to be tested for syphilis, which came back positive. The PA decided that there was a good possibility that she contracted syphilis and it became severe, which led to hypertension and eventually, stroke.

On the village outreaches we also got to shadow a lot of different PAs and see a lot of different patients with a lot of different conditions. All of the PAs were happy to teach us and asked us to help them take blood pressures and ask a lot of questions.