For Woodland-based Dr. Liana Turkot, the war in her home country of Ukraine led her to become involved in providing medical supplies, training and connecting Ukrainian hospitals directly with suppliers. supplies as the conflict continues.
“You just want to help because you’re devastated that you don’t know what’s going to happen, but sitting around and doing nothing is beyond what you can do,” said Turkot, a doctor at the Dignity Health Woodland clinic. stress.
She traveled to Ukraine on March 2 – 10 days after the fighting began – with medical supplies doctors would need to treat the wounded donated by Woodland Memorial Hospital and its clinic. She stayed for three weeks and provided hands-on training to local care teams who were inexperienced in dealing with trauma typically seen in wartime.
“We also purchased portable ultrasound machines and surgical equipment,” Turkot explained. “We knew it would be a difficult situation and it was long before any humanitarian aid started arriving.”
However, she said that she and other doctors providing aid through Operation Blessing – a religious aid organization “dedicated to demonstrating the love of God by relieving the human needs and sufferings of United States and around the world” – being there in the first moments was important “because we felt we could help unite people.
Turkot noted that Ukrainian doctors needed tourniquets and portable ultrasound scanners so they could better treat and diagnose civilian and military injuries that were increasing as a result of Russia’s seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
“They didn’t have the training for it because no one expected to have a war,” Turkot pointed out. “We didn’t expect to have such a high number of casualties…and now we’re seeing it happen.”
Portable ultrasound machines have been key to helping doctors in Ukraine as they help diagnose internal injuries quickly and can be used in hospitals, at home or in the field.
Turkot pointed out that most cases of war-related trauma were blunt trauma cases – meaning nothing entered the body and the injuries were internal – which makes portable ultrasounds important for understanding how diagnose most patients.
“With the portable ultrasound… you can diagnose in all the unusual situations because all you need is this little device, which you can put in a little purse, and you need a cell phone” , she explained.
Turkot is now back in the United States, but his job has shifted from hands-on training to ensuring that needed medical equipment and supplies get to hospitals using a priority ladder as many supplies are limited and it’s hard to deliver them.
“I think the biggest part for us is the connection we provided,” Turkot remarked. “I find the people who are in Ukraine providing medical supplies, reaching out to different countries to get them at the most reasonable price, and making sure the mail gets to where they’re needed.”
Additionally, Turkot makes sure the supplies have arrived by asking them to send him photos when they are received. If not, she contacts the “chain” of people, organizations and businesses involved to find out what happened and resolve the issue.
“It probably takes me four or five hours on the phone,” Turkot explained.
She noted that she is usually on the phone in the evening from around 8 p.m. and continues until 1 a.m., which is morning in Ukraine. She also phones in the morning before she starts work at 9 a.m. to make sure hospitals get their supplies.
Phone calls are usually her liaisons to be able to communicate supply and equipment needs to ensure that each hospital receives the help it needs immediately.
“We are not a big company with huge funds,” she stressed. “We try to get as much as possible to meet as many needs as possible, but the needs are much more than what we can provide, so it has to come down to what is most important and recognize that and put that into action. priority. double.”
While Turkot wishes she could return to help in Ukraine, she thinks the work she’s doing here – connecting Ukrainian hospitals to a chain of medical equipment suppliers and groups responsible for delivering the equipment – is too important. .
“I don’t have too many people doing what we do and I think that’s what we need most right now.”
Turkot originally lived in Ukraine until she and her family were forced to move to the United States at the age of 31 as religious refugees due to the influence of the Soviet Union on his country in the early 1990s.
“We came as refugees for religious reasons at that time because my whole family was persecuted since it was during the whole Soviet period,” she explained. “It was an opportunity for us to leave the country and I had my six-year-old son with me.”
Given that Turkot grew up in Ukraine and even spent time there teaching other doctors before the war, it was a difficult time and she cannot yet treat everything that is happening there.
“How can we live in two different worlds? She asked. “One is in America – peaceful and sunny and you go to work and think, ‘what are you going to do in your garden?’ “And the other where people, like in Mariupol, have no more food, no more water. There are 23 medical professionals, there are more than 600 wounded and they have no medicine.”
“It’s hard to process this in my mind and I don’t think I can process this. That’s why we keep working because the war is not over.
Although Russia has shown no signs of backing down in the short term and is apparently preparing for a long fight, Turkot will continue to do all it can to ensure that Ukrainian hospitals remain as functional as possible and have the equipment needed to treat the wounded. .
“Sometimes we look at the situation and we say to ourselves that it is impossible to solve it,” Turkot remarked. “Then you start doing something and it gets a little better. And sometimes you realize you’ve actually done something that really makes a difference, but it started with a feeling of impossible at the very beginning.
