Night Owl

There are many stories about going far beyond the call of duty from mission volunteers. The family and friends following along should be proud of the work their loved ones are doing. We could post about a different person every day as they are all doing more than you could imagine. It is difficult to single out one person but over the last two missions in Uganda this nurse as worked the night shift to care for the surgical patients and we wanted to tell her story.

Kay Johnson, from North Kansas City Hospital is an experienced mission traveler and is no stranger to Uganda. The last two mission trips to Uganda she arrives at Lacor Hospital at 6:30pm for a briefing of those days’ surgical patients and then throughout the evening she sees the last of our mission team leave for the hotel. Over the next 14 hours she works with hospital staff to manage the care of our surgical patients.

The Lacor staff are talented caring people but adding 30-40 new patients a day can be quite overwhelming. This position was created to be on site, to guide and support, so each patient we see can quickly recover and be released from the hospital. Back home computers and charts and multiple nurses would be available to track medicines and record when a patient has an update to their condition but here the system is much different with loose paper and notes transferred from one shift to the next. Kay manages it with an expertise that will amaze.

If you know Kay you already know that she made it clear that this is a team effort and she could not do this without the rest of our mission team. Yes, this is a team of truly devoted volunteers but we also know without Kay the care would not be so streamlined and organized. She has a wonderful caring spirit and is as good for her patients as she is for the rest of our mission team.