CHPM - Mission humanitaire en Ukraine

The Monaco Private Dialysis Centre (CHPM) is making healthcare staff and equipment available for Ukraine

By: Angeline Pena Prado, Director of Nursing Care, Quality Engineer for the Quality and Safety of Care (Monaco Private Dialysis Centre – CHPM)

The Monaco Private Dialysis Centre (CHPM) made its Director of Nursing Care, Ms Angeline Pena Prado, available from 12 to 19 June 2022 for a humanitarian mission in western Ukraine with the association Doc4Ukraine.

An emergency care nurse for more than a decade, Ms Pena Prado has also been a member of the French Red Cross Emergency Response Unit (ERU) since 2004. Although she has experience in geopolitically unstable countries, including Pakistan, Chad and Haiti, this was her first visit to a country at war.

Her mission involved training Ukrainian nurses in “damage control” (learning to manage massive haemorrhages, obstructed airways and thoracic trauma – the main causes of death in war zones) so that they are able to treat soldiers injured on the frontlines and civilians. Many nurses are volunteering to go to the frontlines, but most of them have no experience of emergency care and have always worked in conventional disciplines such as surgery or medicine.

Having recently validated her university degree in Disaster Medicine at Nice University Hospital – CESU 06 – Ms Pena Prado was able to put her knowledge into practice immediately.

Assisted by her translator, Katerina, and Dr Paul Ihout from the American Hospital of Paris (who is bilingual in Ukrainian), she trained 257 nurses working in hospitals and nursing schools.

« The training sessions were extremely well prepared by the Ukrainian volunteers from Doc4Ukraine. The nursing network is very strong in Ukraine, and the nurses were looking forward to the training. We had to go over simple techniques such as manual compression and the recovery position, since many of the nurses knew the basics, but had not had any practice ».

Despite the regular air raid signals and requirements to take shelter, the sessions always went ahead:
« We sometimes had to do the session in one hour instead of two, since we were sheltering in hospital basements. Sometimes the nurses were so engrossed in the training that they asked us to complete the sessions in the corridors, far away from windows and protected in the middle of the building. »

The CHPM has also sent healthcare equipment (antibiotics, resuscitation equipment, tourniquets, etc.) to hospitals in Ukraine via Doc4Ukraine, which transports three lorryloads of equipment per week.

Ms Pena Prado will return to Ukraine in mid-October for another mission, this time to provide nursing support in the emergency department of one of the largest hospitals in western Ukraine.

If you would like to help Doc4Ukraine, see: https://www.doc4ukraine.org/
Check out Ms Pena Prado’s story here: