Page 91 - Hlabisa Hospital Handbook

P. 91

The Hlabisa Hospital Handbook is an essential desktop reference
book for every community service doctor, medical officer, or medical
student who serves in a rural district hospital in South Africa. Generalist
doctors in rural hospitals are called upon to deal with a vast spectrum
of disease and pathology, which can be overwhelming to the recent
graduate or newcomer from overseas, who is “thrown in at the deep
end” with little or no supervision. Local clinical management protocols
have not been compiled in may institutions, and medical staff make
their own decisions without standardized treatment guidelines.
Standard medical textbooks often suggest investigations and
management plans that are unavailable in rural areas. The Handbook
aims to fill this gap, and provide simple and practical guidelines for the
commonest clinical conditions in tropical southern Africa.

Written specifically for the context of Hlabisa Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal,
the Handbook’s approach in management to a wide range of conditions
nevertheless is applicable to similar rural hospitals in other regions
of the country. The author, a physician from the UK with four years
experience in rural practice, has included all the clinical management
protocols that he would have liked to have known when he started at
Hlabisa, including a section on the Zulu language. He has drawn on
the accumulated experience of a wide range of colleagues, and in this
way has extended the scope of the material. This book is an extremely
valuable resource for young doctors, and provides a baseline that can
be adapted for use in district hospitals in other contexts.

In the deep end, the Hlabisa Handbook is a lifeline.

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