Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Uuguzi huleta afya...Nurses bring health!






Swahili Word of the Week: Uuguzi huleta afya...Nurses bring health!

Weather: It is perfect. Blue skies, Upepo season has arrived and it is lovely. Breezes, sun and clear air. I love it!

Special Shout Out: Thank for all the birthday wishes and cards. Made my birthday season!

Nurses in Tanzania

So as I prepare for my trip home (YIPPEEE) I contemplate my time here so far. Last week was a very nice summation of what amazing experiences I have had so far. I had a superb birthday and then traveled upcountry to do site visits on our libraries that we have place in VERY rural areas. This gave me an opportunity to see some of the work that we are accomplishing.

A wise woman once told me (thank you kate campell) about the lollypop theory. Bedside nursing, although very hard work ,generally gives you a little lollypop at the end of each shift. When you walk out of an exhausting 12 hour shift, there is generally at least one thing that you did well and had a positive affect on a patient. The work I do now does not have this immediate gratification, but hopefully in time there will be a huge lollypop that will make up for all the little lollypops I am missing being away from bedside nursing.

Last week I got to have a quick lick of this larger lollypop. After traveling for 2 full days up to Singida I arrived at a nursing school in very remote Tanzania. Although, very minimalist compared to developed nation standards, they are churning out good nurses. What was amazing was the dedication of these nursing students. There were 265 enrolled nursing students, most of them were 18 years old. Very shy, polite and dressed in pink pinafores. The school had a total of 4 nurse tutors for all 265 students. No skills lab and a very, very outdated library. The capacity of the school was 120 students. This meant that all students shared a twin bed. Dorms were set up with two bunk beds so in a 12 x 8 room there were 8 nursing students. Yet when I arrived, they greeted me with shy smile and told me how much they enjoyed and appreciated their new Mobile Library; As did their exhausted and overworked tutors.

We continued on through to 4 more nursing schools and met an amazing third generation Norwegian MD TZ resident whose grandfather was a Dr in TZ in the 1950’s, as was his father and now he is the medical director. They were running an amazing hospital in the middle of nowhere. People travelled from miles around. The tribes around the area are very primitive, I saw my first tribe members with facial scarring. Beautiful. The nursing students here were also amazing. I met with the 3rd year leadership students. As part of leadership they are assigned different school tasks. Some were assigned to the kitchen and as part of the leadership class had just slaughtered a cow (only in Africa moment). These nursing students are entering jobs where they generally have 30 patients, they are underpaid, not respected and very overworked. They share beds, books and uniforms in order to get through nursing school. It makes me proud to be a nurse because nurses are a dedicated and amazing breed.

The trip was grueling on awful roads. I was physically sore from being jostled around for 8 hours a day in the back of the car. My life flashed before my eyes at least three times. Once when a daladala stopped short in the middle of the road. The driver had me in stitches when he stated that “DalaDala drivers are all born from the same father.” This is so true. Every country you go to DalaDala drivers all drive too fast, play their music too loud, stop in inconvenient places and have no regard to anyone else on the road. My second life flash moment happened as we were traveling down from Arusha. We came upon a quite spectacular crash where 4 Lorries had collided. Two being petrol tankers. One exploded, the other lay on its side with about 200 people crowded around it with Jerry cans. I asked the driver why and he said the driver of the Lorry would charge the people to fill up the Jerry can to empty the truck. I guess the nearest petrol station was a few 100 km away so it was door to door service for most of these people. It does make you wonder if the money ever makes it back to the petrol company though, and the safety of emptying fuel in the bush out of a crashed tanker with an exploded tanker a few hundred meters away, hmmmmmm.

Food for thought
Tanzanian nurses comprise over 60% of thehealthcare workforce
By 2020 they will only have 50% of the nurses they need (at the rate their producing nurses)
The average age of a nurse tutor in TZ is 55.

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