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Peru – The Clinical team is taking shape

November 10, 2007 - Peru

by Steve Henrichon

We have hired our clinical manager. His name is Dr Guillermo Huasasquiche and he was referred to us by his good friend, the Good Doctor David. Dr Guillermo is 31 and he currently manages a group of 5 medical outposts near Cusco. In a few years, he has aspirations to specialize in cardiothoracic surgery. He will be relocating 15 hours to come work at our clinic. We changed our model so that the manager is actually a physician who can spend 50% of his time seeing patients and 50% with administrative work. So we technically have 1.5 physicians…and instead of seeing 24 patients on average per day, 36 can now be seen.

Dr Oscar Espinoza with Merck-Peru was kind enough to interview Dr Guillermo for us with specific regard to his medical knowledge and aptitude. He passed Dr Oscar’s litmus test with flying colors. We then conducted an intensive 30 minutes interview to get a feel for his management style, intentions, and capability for managing the clinic with our vision in mind. We are fully confident that Dr Guillermo has the passion to make this clinic his own, and to take on the responsibility to make it successful. He will be starting up with us on November 20.

We knew Dr David was going to be our doctor all along but we had him interview with Dr Oscar as well. Dr Oscar loved speaking with the Good Doctor. The Good Doctor has a passion for helping and serving those less privileged with little to no money. He has always been involved in community health initiatives. After Dr Oscar´s rave review, I almost feel like he would be let down if we were to tell him we were going to pass on hiring the Good Doctor.

Our medical staff is taking shape. The Good Doctor is now in the process of hiring a nurse and a pharmacist to work in a temporary capacity out of the tent. If the Good Doctor, Rene, myself…and especially Dr Guillermo like what we see from the nurse and pharmacist, then we will extend permanent full-time offers to them once the clinic moves to the permanent building. We have arranged for a night guard to watch over the temporary clinic at the church and make sure no one steals our medicine and equipment.

The three people still to hire, once in the permanent clinic, is a receptionist/admin assistant, a clinical assistant, and a house maid. The Admin Assistant will help Dr Guillermo with administrative tasks and will direct the patients when they arrive at the clinic. Hopefully this admin assistant will speak English so he/she can help Dr Guillermo (who speaks no English) prepare his progress reports in English. The clinical assistant is someone to help the Doctors and nurse with any procedures that need assistance. The house maid will be responsible for laundry, cleaning, cooking if necessary, etc.

And…that…is…our…All-star medical team.

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