Visiting Haitian doctors team up with local MDs for sickness simulation

A group of Haitian physicians were in Newfoundland last week for a collaborative research project with local doctors.

A three-day boot camp in Trinity, funded in part by an economic grant, used technology to simulate sick patients.

Tia Renouf, inaugural chair of Memorial University's discipline of emergency medicine, says such projects allow doctors to improve their skills in a consequence-free environment. 

"We have an entity at the university called the Tuckamore Simulation Research Collaborative, which takes the view that simulation is a health priority, and doctors can share techniques and procedures without having to practice on people," said Renouf.

"Newfoundland benefits from this because we gain some very rich knowledge about how medical care, its challenges and its successes, unfold in a hospital in the north of Haiti," she said. 

Renouf said Memorial has more in common with the Haitian medical system than some might think. 

"It's not entirely unlike our system because we have a very distributed medical school — we have students on the coast of Labrador," she said.

Visiting doctor Yvel Zephyr believes doctors from this province could benefit from working in Haiti, where there are fewer resources.

"If you go there you have to improve your clinical feeling. You have to learn how to treat patients with less technology," he said. "I think it's a part of it."

Zephyr said researchers in Haiti have seen a significant drop in infant mortality rates. He hopes more research, and collaborative projects like the one in Trinity, can better determine how that was achieved.