1) Calendar
Nepal uses a different calendar for work. In Nepal it is presently the 24th day of the 8th month in the year 2070. It's a lunar calendar 57.7 years ahead of the Gregorian and apparently founded by an Indian Emperor after a battle. It is different from the Indian calendar which is 78 years behind the Gregorian.
2) Patient Age
Patients are relatively young. A 70 year old is elderly in Nepal. Very different from the 80 and 90 year olds I've regularly cared for in Canada. A combination of hard manual labour, poor preventive medicine, and late presentation to hospital when ill I'd imagine. Official life expectancy is 68 according to the World Bank.
3) Phones / Ethics
Smartphones are very common with the doctors and residents. In a hospital with film imaging the camera offers portability and quick recall for images. The phone also allows quick contact between doctors in a hospital with only overhead pages - there are no pagers like we have in Canada. Overall the smartphone use makes for more efficient care, but at the cost of patient confidentiality. This lack of respect for patient confidentiality is pervasive: hallway consults / updates, photos of pathology without asking consent, and multiple consults per room at the outpatient department. Only once did I see a staff ask families to leave the ward during rounds.
For those curious Android is easily in the majority. Very few iPhones and only one Blackberry and one Windows phone.
4) Blog Format
This is my first blog so leave a comment on what you like etc. Especially true for formatting / technical issues like the email subscription - I have no idea if they're working! Also incidentally most of the posts are being done with the mobile version so there may be some strange autocorrects.
From a recent dinner conversation with two Egyptian born, Canadian anaesthetists - 70 is also considered old in Egypt.
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