First day at SMURD!! (Monday)

We live on a street that turns into an incredibly steep hill. At 7am, in below zero celsius, Amanda and I soldiered up it in our running shoes and became rapidly breathless. One dog started barking and half a minute later we'd set the whole neighbourhood of dogs off announcing the presence of some crazy tourists. Needless to say, I sped away round the next corner; this took me up an even steeper hill but helped me find an outdoor gym, a zoo, and an incredibly glorious sunrise :)

The mood was all excitement as we travelled 1km down the road to SMURD Emergency Department of the Hospital and donned our white scrubs for work. Jason got to don the sexy SMURD suit for a day with the ambulance.

First view of SMURD

Me, Tori, James, Hannah, Amanda, Jason

An ambulance paramedic named Mihaila met us and showed us the 5 areas of work in Emergency: Resuscitation, Immediate Care, Urgent Care, Critical Care, and Pediatrics.

Pediatric bay

All areas and their equipment are colour coded to make life easy and seem to have very good facilities; this ED is new and very well-funded. I was assigned to Resus, the Red zone today. Like detectives, four of us poured over 12-lead ECG's and patient history's trying to guess the right diagnosis. Of course everything is in Romanian and the staff are not necessarily free enough to explain, or well-versed in English medical terms, we found.

Myself and Tori

We hovered around and whenever we saw an opportunity for extra hands we jumped in. I made a couple patient transfer trips upstairs to the main hospital which presented a stark contrast in both quality and resources, which was not altogether cheerful,but understandable: with lack of funding, you make do. In Resus, we assisted with a catheterisation procedure and I held a patient's head in position so that the Dr could perform a central line procedure so inotropes could kick the patient's heart back into action post arrest.

We are getting introduced to some politics here. It's the national day of Romania. Today's celebration is, however, not appreciated by the majority of Transylvanians. That's because, most of the people living in this area are actually Hungarian. About 100yrs ago old Romania (the current southern part) joined with Moldovia (the northern part) and then took over the middle part (Transylvania), taking it off Hungary. There is still quite a visible divide, and Transylvanian Hungarians must learn Romanian yet Romanians aren't expected to know Hungarian.
Anyway, because of the celebrations most restaurants were closed, thus we were dismayed to
arrive at the door of our daily dinner spot and see no light. Aushi and her boyfriend Arpad
 saved the day by taking us to La Frog where they'd earlier made a reservation - very cool bar with swings and hammocks and retro decor. We sipped some sav blanc and ordered in pizzas followed by cocktails (because why not when they're less than $3!) while discussing our days. Ordering lunch had been quite an ordeal for us non-Romanian speakers. "Nu vorbesc Romaneshte" is the most essential phrase for us to learn. Not only differences in practice and note taking (or lack of), but also certain staff provided entertainment and learning opportunities. Sometimes, quite honestly, you learn best from seeing what not to do! (Ask me for stories when I get back!)