Dr. Richard received his diploma from the faculty of medicine at the State University of Haiti in 2014. He has been with C2C since April 2017 at our Cité Chauvel site, which is our busiest clinic since it is located in a peri-urban community. Over the course of his time with C2C, Dr. Richard has been a key figure in the success and high-quality of our clinical services at Cité Chauvel.
During my recent trip to Haiti, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Richard, who has been at our Cité Chauvel clinic since it opened in April 2017. Dr. Richard shared with me his perspective on C2C’s clinics and the growth of the organization overall.
“A lot of things have changed since the clinic first opened,” he began, “At first, we did not have nearly as many patients. The staffing was not where it is now. We currently have a social service nurse, doctor, and lab tech [in addition to our permanent staff]. We also have a formalized relationship with the Ministry of Health now which I think is very good.”
In terms of Dr. Richard’s vision for the future of C2C’s clinical services, he has many ideas on how to improve staff training and create access to care for people who might not otherwise have it.
“I would like to improve communication between doctors and patients in our clinics,” he explained, “because they don’t always teach that in medical school here as much as they should. If we could also partner with medical schools to improve training, it would have a broad impact on the quality of care of our clinic network and would also spread the word about C2C’s work.”
When it comes to continuing education for existing C2C staff, Dr. Richard said “I would like to establish a continuous training program with all the staff in a certain subject. There are gaps in education that I would like to fill to improve capacity. Even if the whole team met just once a year, I think it would be very beneficial.”
Dr. Richard would also like to expand access to C2C’s services even further. He told me about a patient story that particularly stuck out to him. “A nineteen-year-old came in with her baby. They were on the street and someone found them. The woman couldn’t walk, and although she had the money to get medical treatment for her child, she did not have enough to take care of herself, too. I talked to the rest of my team to see what we could do for them. The woman had gastroenteritis, so we took care of her and bought her food as well because neither of them had eaten. She got much better and so did the child because we were able to give them the medicines they needed. We sent them home very healthy. In the future, I would like to create more opportunities to help patients like that who cannot afford regular medical care.”
Dr. Richard is clearly an integral part of the C2C team, and although he has already contributed so much to our work and to Haiti, he still has many professional goals he is working towards. “I want to continue to learn from people and be able to share my experiences with staff in the other clinics in the near future. I hope I can serve the organization in even more ways than what I’m doing now.”
We are truly lucky to have Dr. Richard as part of our team. Due to leaders like him in our clinics and in the field, we are able to assess the needs of the communities we serve and provide them with the quality care they have come to expect from C2C.
