SEVERAL joint replacement procedures were recently conducted at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
The procedures served as a training opportunity for resident doctors and registrars at the medical institution.

The surgeries, four knees and two hip replacements were led by Dr Kaaleshwar Ramcharran, Dr Fawcett Jeffrey and Dr Zhou Chou.
President, Dr Irfaan Ali congratulated the team, including the nurses and the rest of the technical team, who completed the procedures.

The surgeries also served as a teaching opportunity for Registrars and Senior Resident Doctors to gain practical exposure to these procedures.
“The aim is to ensure adequate Joint Replacement Surgeons are placed at the Regional Hospitals, including those under construction, to reduce the backlog and prevent long waiting periods for patients,” Dr Ali said in a post on his official Facebook page.

Dr Ramcharran, in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, said: “We are hoping to train enough residents and when they graduate… we are hoping to get enough joint replacement surgeons to furnish all these [new] hospitals and, in the future, we can avoid this kind of backlog building up.”

He said that prior to last weekend’s activity, they were only able to accommodate two patients per week for these surgeries at GPHC based on the volume of surgeries that are happening at the hospital.
With this activity, resident doctors will now be able to experience these surgeries on a more frequent basis.

Additionally, Dr Ramcharran said that the aim is to move to develop a fellowship programme to officially train these doctors, which would be approved by the University of Guyana to facilitate increased and official training in this area.
With several hospitals currently under construction across the country and expected to come on stream soon, this hands-on training will equip doctors who could be sent to these facilities to decentralise this type of service.

“So right now it’s more of a hands-on training for these guys, but to give you an exact time as to how long it will take to train one of them it all depends on how many cases we are able to get done and their availability,” Dr Ramcharran said.
He related that they are hoping to maintain the same posture and clear the backlog of surgeries, and also provides hands-on experience for the registrars and senior residents.