Northwestern Memorial News Blog

On February 13, we shared an update from Dr. Rahul Khare who was volunteering in Haiti to teach emergency medicine. Along with teaching medical students the art of emergency medicine, Khare and his team also helped Justinian University Hospital in Cap Haitien learn how to best utilize a newly constructed critical care unit (CCU). While a CCU is a familiar site at American hospitals, it’s a new concept to the Haitians. Below are some reflections on the trip from Dr. Khare, who returned to Chicago last week:

As a follow up to the February 2 post “Northwestern Medicine Doctor Heads to Haiti to Teach Emergency Medicine”, below is an update from Rahul Khare, MD, emergency medicine physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, regarding his journey.

It’s been a phenomenal week so far. We are in Cap Haitien, Haiti, a city in the north of Haiti on the water. We are working at the Justinian University, which is the 2nd largest hospital in Haiti. Justinian University has a nursing school, residency (one year for primary care), and over 250 hospital beds (including surgery, medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics, urology, and orthopaedics). Like many hospitals, the ER is not a big part of the hospital…yet.

When a massive earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, more than 100 volunteers from Northwestern Medicine® traveled to the devastated country to offer emergency medical care to victims. Two years later, one of those volunteers is returning, this time training young Haitian doctors and medical students who are trying to rebuild the health of their nation.

“In Haiti, medical training is fairly rudimentary,” said Rahul Khare, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an emergency room physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “They go to medical school and then the next year they’re a doctor. The years of training doctors receive in the U.S. isn’t possible there.”

A winter blast is expected to invade Chicago tonight bringing with it this season’s coldest temperatures, snow and ice. The wintry mix can not only present unfavorable conditions, but serious safety threats too. Rahul Khare, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital cautions that when temperatures turn frigid and dip into the single digits, it is important to take warnings seriously and be careful while outdoors.

“We usually see an influx of patients during cold spells,” said Khare. “Minor injuries such as bumps, bruises and sprains from slips and falls on the ice are common, as well as more serious conditions like hypothermia.”

To stay safe this winter, he recommends the following tips:

These days, it’s rare that I make it through a shift in the ER without seeing at least one patient who has Googled their symptoms and already made a self-diagnosis. This trend of do-it-yourself doctoring has become so common that we often joke that the patient has been seen by Dr. Google.  In general, searching your symptoms is not a bad thing to do, as it can help you become more educated about your health.  However, more information can also lead to more anxiety and a self-diagnosis that isn’t necessarily true.  This is what we refer to as cyberchondria.