THE Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) was able to clear its backlog of hernia patients awaiting surgery by some 70 per cent over the last weekend through a collaborative initiative called “Operation Hernia.”

The city hospital was also joined by the New Amsterdam Hospital, both of which worked in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health.

At the GPHC, 64 surgeries were completed on 50 patients with the help of eight lead surgeons; 13 surgical residents; 32 persons from the Department of Surgery and a number of medical officers.
Meanwhile, the Department of Surgery at the New Amsterdam Hospital completed 21 surgeries for 18 patients with the support of two lead surgeons and other government medical officers.
The numerical difference is attributed to patients who had multiple surgeries or hernias.

On Tuesday, a press conference was hosted at the Georgetown Hospital to provide details on the initiative.

“Operation Hernia was a unique opportunity for us at the Georgetown Public Hospital in conjunction with our colleagues from the New Amsterdam Hospital to try to bring relief to some of the patients who were awaiting surgeries for hernias,” said GPHC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) George Lewis.

GPHC’s Head of Orthopaedics Dr. David Samaroo said on November 26, 2018, at a meeting with the CEO, a mandate was given to complete the backlog of surgeries.

“I thought at that time it might have been an impossible task because of the volume of repairs that we had waiting for surgeries and the number of surgeries we wanted to get done within a short period of time of planning,” he began.

“But having left that meeting and having found out from surgeons and having started to put the team together, I realised it was very possible for us to clear a large part of the backlog of patients that we have for hernia repairs.”

To facilitate the process, surgeons at GPHC were asked to give up their elective list of patients on Thursday, Friday and to some extent on Saturday and surgeries for hernia cases were conducted for a period of time.

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT
To put it into context, Head of the Department of General Surgery, Dr. Navindranauth Rambaran said the works achieved in the short period represents several months of hernia surgeries undertaken.
To ensure the smooth flow of the initiative, he explained that several considerations were made: one of which was the capacity of the General Surgery Ward to hold only 52 patients.

However, over two days, the medical team brought in 50 patients for surgery.

Dr. Rambaran stated further that the team “challenged the cultural norm” with most of the patients being discharged within 24 hours.
He added: “Whenever we do these interventions, such as these projects, there should be no compromise to the care of other patients seeking emergent care; and we were very careful to ensure that this did not occur; that we used the resources in such a way that they were not unavailable for other patients who needed it in case of emergencies.”

However, although the hospital has conducted more surgeries this year, some 4,015 compared to 3,621 in 2017, there is still a general backlog.

Moving forward, Dr. Rambaran recommended that the project be examined for areas of improvement and determine whether it could be a template for other hospitals and other areas in hospitals experiencing backlogs.

“There are certainly research potential benefits for the future and we’ve already started collecting the data for this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lewis noted that plans are already in place for the project to expand to other conditions and locations.

“I believe that Operation Hernia was successful and I can say that it is not one-off; it is something that we’re going to continue to do in the future. In addition to that, other phases of operations that the Georgetown Public Hospital will undertake –perhaps in early next year— we’re going to attempt Operation Fibroids and we’re going to initiate operations whereby we’re going to reduce backlogs in other departments,” he said.

The CEO added: “We will continue to partner with the Ministry of Public Health so that other hospitals can also be a part of similar activities in the future.”