ASUM Outreach, Canon Medical and the wonderful team at Vaiola Hospital in Tonga are thrilled to report on the first visit to Tonga, working side-by-side to provide ultrasound education and training, in Tonga.
Leading up to the visit to Tonga, the ASUM team worked closely with the chief radiographer/sonographer, Lei’aloha Makaafi, to determine the needs of the sonographers in Tonga, at both Vaiola Hospital and the outer islands. Our collaboration determined the goal of our first visit was to focus on obstetric ultrasound. The Australasian team consisting of Jo McCann, Peter Coombs and Brett Ayres, provided online lectures to the team in in Tonga. This consisted of optimisation, 1st trimester, 3rd trimester and wellbeing, and basic fetal heart. The online training helped establish the various needs of the sonographers and radiographers in Tonga, with a mix of skill and experience across the group.
The first visit of this two-year project was to send our ASUM Outreach team of Jo, Peter and Karen Le (as Brett was unable to travel) to the Imaging Department at Vaiola Hospital for 4 days (Wednesday to Saturday) to maximise the clinical learning and training without the pressure of patient lists. Vaiola Hospital had asked specifically for training in fetal heart and 3rd trimester ultrasound, with many patients presenting later in pregnancy.
The team at Vaiola were highly engaged and eager to learn. 15 staff attended the training including 2 radiographers from the outer islands, and both radiology and obstetric registrars. Each day began early with lectures and case reviews, with time for reflection on lessons learnt the previous day. The day was spent providing hands-on training during all ultrasound examinations, with 50% obstetrics (typically 3rd trimester) and the remainder a mix of general radiology cases for both adults and paediatrics.
With completion of this visit, we were delighted to hear from Lei’aloha:
We can’t wait for our next visit and thoroughly enjoyed the generosity of the Tongan team.
“Good morning, I’m just updating regarding the workshops from last week with the visiting team. It was a blessing for us to have them here for the workshops and we did learn so much from all of them and we adapt well to them and the training, there’s not enough words to thank them for their hard work in facilitating the materials as well guide us in hands-on training, and I hope that they enjoy their time here in Tonga.
I’m happy that we already started to implement new things into our department protocol as from yesterday such as using graphs from our machines (scanners) in our reports of 3rd Tri obstetric scan.
We also spend more time now in scanning especially looking at fetal heart in more detailed as we learned from this workshop.”
We can’t wait for our next visit and thoroughly enjoyed the generosity of the Tongan team.