Start of placement..

So i started my placement yesterday and thought i would add a blog to write about it as there is so much to say!

At the moment i am on the children's ward. it has about 40 beds and is constantly busy, there is only 3 nurses on each shift. There are two main rooms (almost like small village halls is the best way of describing it) and a few other side rooms for 'isolation' cases (no infection control whatsoever though so definitely not isolation rooms!). There is no monitoring equipment at all and the most advanced equipment is a drip stand.. the whole children's area is very open, no privacy at all, beds crowded close to each other, patient toilets are so smelly and disgusting, the whole place is quite dirty, and was a bit of a shock the first time i walked in but i have sort of got used to it already!

About 70% of the children admitted are for cases of severe malaria, often with complications e.g. anaemia. Other cases include typhoid, TB, malnourishment and dehydration, and a few cases that I would see in the UK e.g. kidney problems, high fevers etc. I asked one of the consultants about the provision of mosquito nets and he said everyone can easily and cheaply get them here as so many are donated through aid organisations, but people apparently do not like using them as they are too hot and irritating...

The attitude of the nurses in particular is so different to the UK and to be honest, they often seem very aloof and 'not caring' towards patients and families but this is just the culture and how they do things here. In particular the attitude to a child dying is so different - for instance when i got in this morning one of the doctors told me a child had died over night rather unnecessarily, as they had needed a blood transfusion as they had severe malaria but no one had bothered to pick it up from the blood bank as it was late evening so the child died overnight. One of my friends also from the UK is on the neonatal unit and on her first day a baby died in her arms...there again was no monitoring equipment and so no one had noticed the baby deteriorating and then when resuscitation was started there was no oxygen in the cannisters. So it is frustrating in situations like that but just have to get on with it and accept that is how it is here; I am not here to change the whole system but to learn how they do things in a place with such limited resources.

Better go now as slow internet...
love ella xx