ON THE COVER
Courtney Nanney CCE
T
hanks GLMS Foundation and Hand in Hand Ministries
for allowing me to join your Nicaragua mission trip for
the eighth time. Each trip gets better and better. As the
only biomedical engineer on the trip, it can be rather
challenging. Fortunately, the clinicians on the trip jumped
in to help. Dr. Tyler Ball fixed a surgical microscope and a lab mi-
croscope. When we couldn’t find a light bulb for a colposcope, Dr.
Cindy Rigby and Dr. Manuel Grimaldi played “MacGever” (Spanish
pronunciation of “MacGyver”). We attached a bright flashlight to
the camera using hair scrunches. It worked and was much cheaper
than the $300 bulb.
It is nice going year after year. You learn what to bring and what
helps. You develop friendships across borders and languages. My
first year, I fixed medical equipment at the dermatology hospital
and the children’s hospital. The next year, I returned to find much
of the equipment broken again. I decided the only way to keep
this going was to teach the folks how to fix their own equipment.
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
I also added a maternal/child hospital and a neuro/ortho hospital
to my to-do list. I found technical folks at each hospital who were
talented on some types of equipment. However, the hospitals and
technicians were not talking and learning from each other. After
much work from the local folks, we were able to form the NBA
(Nicaragua Biomedical Association). We had our first meeting
three years ago. I taught on electrical safety and electrosurgery. We
had folks attend from Managua (30 attendees). Last year, we met
and had 50 attendees from around Nicaragua. This year we met at
“UNI,” the Nicaragua Engineering University. We had 70 people
with two visiting professors from El Salvador. One of the team, Jane
Howland, introduced the group to lab quality control. At the end of
the three-day meeting, UNI announced that they would be offering
a B.S. program in Biomedical Engineering starting this summer.
Thanks for your faithful support. You are making a difference in
the lives of the mission teams and the Nicaraguans.
Courtney Nanney is a Biomedical Engineer at KentuckyOne.