On her first day in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Dr. Rana Hamdy discovered that a patient she had seen upon arrival had died - a teenage boy in need of dialysis whose life she knew was in jeopardy after noticing blood in his urine.

Shortly before Hamdy departed, an expectant mother had gone into labor.

During that pendulum swing from death to life, the Johns Hopkins third-year pediatrics resident sometimes spent more than 20 hours each day aiding victims of the tragedy that has killed an estimated 200,000 Haitians while leaving many thousands injured.

She was among six doctors who visited Haiti as part of a tropical medicine elective in the Hopkins School of Medicine's pediatric residency program. Most of the group arrived about 2 a.m. on the Saturday after the Jan. 12 quake and immediately were set to work on patients in the United Nations compound hospital adjacent to the Port-au-Prince airport.

Hamdy joined two other residents, Dr. Delphine Robotham of Baltimore and Jennifer Webb of Washington, in recounting their experiences Friday after returning from Haiti. The program is led by Johns Hopkins ChildrensCenter emergency physician Dr. Karen Schneider, who is still in Haiti.

Hamdy said the death of the teenager - the first of five deaths she witnessed - motivated her to work harder to get patients the care they needed.

"The hardest part was knowing that if we had gotten him on a plane to Miami he might have survived. We knew what he needed, we just couldn't get him what he needed," she said. "After that, we tried our best to advocate getting the patients transferred."

Robotham said the three are better doctors because of the trip.