by CCH Communications & Outreach Director, Abby Gwaltney
It’s amazing how many things we have figured out how to do virtually! If you’d told me 6 months ago that my daughter would be at home on a video chat with our Physical Therapist (in her own home) watching her raise and lower her arms, I would have been baffled. I never would have believed that a medical professional could watch my daughter through a screen, diagnose her shoulder injury, and email her a list of exercises to help. But it’s been 4 weeks since that initial PT “telehealth” visit, and my daughter is back to playing cul-de-sac basketball (yay for her!) and mowing the lawn (yay for me!).
CCH’s healthcare professionals are similarly trying to push the boundaries of what’s possible with the technology and infrastructure in Haiti. One exciting project that’s been underway since May is developing ways to remotely treat our PT rehab clinic patients. While CCH’s Primary Care Clinic in Jacmel has remained open with COVID safety protocols, our Physical Therapy (PT) rehab clinic has not done in-person consultations since COVID shut the country down in March.
In the meantime, we’ve been filming videos with exercises for common PT issues, and we’ve been developing our video conferencing capabilities for virtual patient consultations. It won’t surprise you to hear that like most things CCH does, we’ve been working with partners to expand our capabilities and make things happen. That’s the power of the Coalition, we do more together than we can alone!
Jacmel is home to one of Haiti’s few film institutes, and many of its graduates stay in the city. Knowing we probably had some contacts in our community, CCH’s Clinic Coordinator, Melissa Jean-Bart, put the word out that we were looking for videographers, and we connected with two different groups of volunteers. Both groups of filmmakers were personally touched by CCH clinics, which have served themselves or family members. They saw the impact of our work in their community and in their own lives. They love how CCH cares for our patients. One volunteer said, “Thank you, it’s my pleasure to give back with what I do professionally.”
Volunteer Group 1: McNally, Belegarde, and Tranquillin 
Volunteer 2: Camille (posing with CCH PT Aide Baker, and a friend)
• Belgarde is connected to CCH through his mother who has been a patient of the Primary Care Clinic. He has been in film realization & script writing since 2011. He is honored to help CCH because we take care of his mother, and are quality option for healthcare for all people in Jacmel.
• McNally has been in the sector of sound and production since 2013 but always had a passion for acting and still continues to act. “I was connected through CCH when I was looking for surgical care due to a inguinal hernia that prevented me from going to work when it was painful.” His surgery took place in 2017 and he has never forgotten that CCH was a beacon of hope when he really needed it.
• Tranquillin has been in direction & photography and screenwriting for the past 7 years. He is connected to CCH because his mother had surgery in Nov 2019. His mother has been suffering from severe fibroids that prevented her from having a good quality of life.
• Camille has been in film and production for several years now. For him doing these videos for us was very personal. He saw first-hand our wonderful work when his parents suffered from strokes (at different times). He remembers feeling so lost when that happened. However, the dedicated staff of the CCH PT rehab clinic went above and beyond with the care they provided to his parents. He will never forget that.
In June, these two groups of volunteers began filming 6 different videos with exercises for the most common PT issues we see: walking, hand use, transferring patients from beds to chairs, back pain, knee pain, and ankle pain. It was important for us to use our own clinic staff in these videos so our patients would understand them and feel comfortable. Our PT Aides, Barbot and Baker, and our PT Nurse, Nadege, traded off acting as the narrator, therapist or patient.
As volunteer projects sometimes go, this took longer than we expected. But we were happy to be able to start sharing these exercise videos with patients via “WhatsApp” (a mobile messaging app popular in Haiti) this month. The response from our patients has been encouraging. Click here to see our video on knee/back pain exercises.
In addition to filming these exercise videos, our PT staff have also been working with CCH’s Board Member and PT professor, Dr. Michele Wiley, and some of her students at Shenandoah University. They’ve been learning techniques and best practices to begin video consultations with patients. This past week (in August), we had our first video appointment. CCH patient, Sheila. Sheila’s been undergoing PT for a knee injury for the past 8 months, and she really benefited from the video capability of being “seen” by our PT staff. Sheila says, “Even when I have been doing some exercises on my own, my rehabilitation progress has slowed down. I am happy that I can meet with my therapist Baker to make up for all the sessions I have lost.” Between her phone consultations, exercise videos, and telehealth check up, Sheila is well on her way to a full recovery.
Here in the US, receiving virtual Physical Therapy care at home seems amazing, at least for me and my daughter! To do this in Haiti is a miraculous accomplishment. We are so grateful to all of our awesome Coalition members — our American and Haitian volunteers, as well as our very dedicated clinic staff. They brainstormed, planned, called, coordinated and KEPT AT IT until we made this happen to serve our patients.
