The Hospital

11-4-2010

This could turn into a long post, but I’m gonna try to give a quick synopsis of the hospital! As we mentioned, there are about 35 beds, and we see patients of all ages (including delivering moms!). The hospital is broken into 5 wards, each with 5-10 beds, and the patients are divided up by age and gender. Most of the time we have about 20-25 patients (we've been told this is the slower season because now that the short rains are here, people would rather work in the fields than come to the hospital!). It’s been fun getting to work with all ages. The majority are people have malaria, which means we are giving a lot of IV antibiotics, blood transfusions and shots in the behind! The patients come from all over. You’ll see them ride in on a bike or motor cycle. There will be three people on the bike, one person will be driving/riding, then there will be the patient, and behind them will be sitting another person to help support /hold them…and you know you have another admission! There are only 2 scheduled nurses (not including us), so we stay pretty busy. It’s different here because the families are much more involved in the care, there are in charge of bringing food to the patients and helping them bathe and toilet, the nurses don’t do any of that! Sometimes, I will walk into the ward and all the moms will be sitting on the floor with their children, sharing a meal, definitely something you’d never see in America! I’d say that communicating with the other nurses and patients had been the biggest challenge, though it’s amazing how much you can communicate by knowing a few key words, such as medicine, injection, butt…(can you tell what I’ve been doing a lot of?!?!) They all love it when we try to speak Swahili though, and everyone is always trying to teach us new words. If only I could just remember them…