Nursing

Lots to report from Ecuador!

I received a new companion on Monday, Hermana Saucedo, from Arkansas. We have only been together 5 days and it feels like months. I have never laughed so much in my LIFE!!! She is loving the nursing aspect of the mission and so excited to be a nurse. We had another conference this week with President Torres from the Guayaquil South Mission. He is a doctor so he gave us a basic overview of how he runs things as far as missionary health. We received some great ideas from their mission however feel that more organization is needed. We have spent so much MONEY on clinical visits in the 6 months I have been here alone and so we have some great ideas on how we want to cut the cost of missionary health down. Hermana Saucedo and I have done a lot of research this week and had a 2 hour meeting with President Dennis and Hermana Dennis last night about our ideas and things we want to do. They LOVED our proposal and want us to have another meeting once we decide how we want to prioritize our projects. With this being said we are no longer proselyting missionaries. Due to the amount of research and reports that will need to be done for this to come to pass we will be spending everyday in the office and a lot of time traveling. We only have a few clinics outside of Guayaquil and NONE of them accept our new Insurance Aetna-GMMI. We will be traveling to every zone in the mission to assess clinics, speak with administration about contracts with the new insurance companies, missionary trainings in district meetings, and health interviews for every single missionary. I will also be administering the FLU vaccination to every missionary.  Here in the southern Hemisphere, flu season started this month.

The new insurance also provides contracts with imaging and laboratories. Part of our project will be assessing medical equipment used for imaging for the make and year or generation. A lot of the imaging machines here are old equipment that was bought from the USA. This makes a huge difference in the diagnosis process for the doctors in Salt Lake. For example we had a sister that was sent home in February for a meniscal tear in the knee, however when she returned home and received another MRI, it showed it was an old tear. With an old generation MRI machine it is unable to detect certain things such as small brain tumors etc. With this being said we will be writing reports on every clinic and lab about the equipment and how the tests are performed to verify.

Will keep everyone updated on our projects throughout the next several weeks. We will be starting with clinics and laboratories in Guayaquil.

Love and Miss Y’all,

Hermana Lyman