This week we wrote and printed user manuals for DataPall that we will be leaving here. We’ve also been doing training sessions for everyone in Palliative Care and the HIV clinic next door. We’ve been doing some last minute data cleanups as well to make sure that we leave the people here with the most accurate numbers and data possible. Tomorrow is our last training session and then we are officially done working with DataPall! Another piece of exciting news is that today the bCPAP was used at St. Gabriel’s Hospital for the first time!
With only a short time left here everyone at the hospital has been eager to show us what goes on in the other wards. Hannah and I shadowed one of the nurses we are friends with, Comfort, on her night shift and we got to see what the hospital is like after dark. One interesting thing is that every single patient who comes in at night gets admitted, even if they would normally only be sent to outpatient. This actually causes some problems at the hospital because patients who should come as outpatient during the day but instead are admitted over night don’t actually end up seeing treatment until the following afternoon. Also, somehow patients have learned that if they come at night they will be admitted no matter what so even if they’ve been told before that they don’t need to be admitted they will just come at night. Over the last few days we’ve gotten to really experience how the hospital runs and the kinds of problems they face not only in Palliative Care but also in rest of the wards.
Hannah, Daniel and I are starting to get really sad about leaving, and we are trying to squeeze in everything we possibly can before we head back to the states next week. We’ve been going out into the villages with our friend Gift a lot and this weekend we’ll be going with him a few more times. We are having dinner with two of our good friends here in a couple days, Nurse Comfort and Sister Justa, and they are going to teach us how to make nsima and some other traditional Malawian food.
Not much else is going on right now, so I’ll put up some extra pictures to make up for it!
Labor ward at a (rare) quiet moment.
Gift’s mom making nsima.
We had lunch with Gift today at his house.
Whenever we go out to the villages with Gift we end up with an entourage of children.
Giraffeeee