Blog to give updates from Guatemala
Lisa Johnson, R.N., who works in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, will be blogging from Guatemala, Dec. 8-16.
Johnson and 16 other faculty and staff from Children's Hospital will travel to Guatemala for the third surgical trip of its kind through a partnership with The Shalom Foundation.
The team will perform a variety of surgeries on pediatric patients while on the trip, and Johnson will blog about their experiences at http://www.vanderbiltchildrens.com/atw_blog. This is the first blog hosted by Children's Hospital.
“I plan to update the blog with text and photos every day,” Johnson said. “I am very excited to tell people about our trip so they can learn about the work that the Children's Hospital and the Shalom Foundation are doing in Guatemala.”
The blog is already being updated as the team prepares for the trip. Readers can post comments for each blog entry.
When in Guatemala, the team will perform surgeries and procedures at Nino Jesus Hospital in Guatemala City including cleft lip and cleft palate repairs, speech surgeries, scar revisions and removing facial, head and neck masses.
The team anticipates screening up to 65 children and operating on 40 during the weeklong trip. The annual surgical trips began in 2005, when the non-profit Shalom Foundation and Children's Hospital partnered to improve the lives of children in Central Guatemala through better health care and improved access to treatment and education.
Visit http://www.diningstars.org/ for information on helping fund the efforts of Children's Hospital and The Shalom Foundation in Guatemala. Faculty and staff at Children's Hospital interested in creating their own blogs can call Susan Kohari, Web coordinator, at 322-3132.