Day 20
Since we got our projects assigned to us, we visited our first hospital today to ask specific questions about our project. We started out by going to Zomba (which apparently is nicknamed Texas according to the Malawian interns? I’m still not sure why…). We visited the maternity and labor ward at Zomba Central Hospital, and met up with Daniel (the nurse I met a couple of weeks ago when we visited different hospitals). I got to ask him a lot of questions regarding the maternal temperature monitor. Ideally during labor, temperature should be monitored at least every one hour. However, because there are 25 mothers and only 1-2 nurses on duty at a time, temperature is actually monitored every 4 hours. And the main reason the ward runs out of digital thermometers is because of the batteries. They have a really short lifespan, and it may take a while for the pharmacy in the hospital to order more thermometers. The last time I visited the hospital, I noticed a TON of posters all over the walls with information for the nurses. There were posters about how to measure dilations, infection prevention protocols, what to do immediately after the baby is born, and other helpful tips for the nurses. I asked today if the nurses had a book with all this information that they could refer to quickly rather than searching the walls for the information. Daniel told us that a handful of books with this information were distributed around the hospital a while ago. There aren’t enough books for everyone, but the few nurses who got to keep these books will refer to them often. I’m hoping that we could try to get the necessary information on the posters and maybe compile it all into pamphlets for the nurses in maternity to have on hand.
Day 21
The next day, we went to Thyolo district hospital (which was also VERY busy). We went to the postnatal ward, where mothers and healthy babies are sent to be monitored immediately after birth. Most of our focus has been on mothers going into labor, but we found that mothers after birth should be checked up on as well. The nurse told us that temperature can vary after birth, especially for mothers who were given C-sections. They have to follow a strict protocol for temperature measuring: measure every 15 minutes the first hour after birth, every 30 minutes the second hour, and hourly afterwards. However, because there are so few nurses and only a couple of digital thermometers on hand, this is not followed all the time. We also received some really great suggestions from the nurse. An LCD display would be much easier to read rather than a four digit blocky display. Our device should also have memory of the patient’s information if the nurses need to check past temperature data. The nurse also said that it may be difficult to see all the patients from the nurse’s station, so having a buzzer and light that goes off at the station when a mother’s monitor reads fever would be helpful. I really liked the last idea, and hopefully my team can come up with a way to create that.
We stopped by the market in Thyolo to get some avocados (the avocados here are AMAZING and we go through A LOT). The interns also bought us some sugar cane for the drive back to Blantyre and I guess Karen and I don’t have strong teeth like them because they finished their canes in like 5 minutes! The Poly students were making fun of us the entire time we struggled through our canes.
Day 22
After visiting two hospitals with our team, we had to present our findings to the rest of the interns as well as a few lecturers from Poly. It was interesting to see what kind of findings the others discovered while on their trip, and I’m excited to see how everyone is going to approach their respective problems. We only have three weeks to work on our solutions, so we have a ton of work ahead!
Day 23
I was pretty satisfied with today. We made it official that the IR sensor is dead and cannot be salvaged. However, we decided to go ahead and use a thermistor instead. We updated our code and changed the circuitry of our device to include the thermistor, and everything seems to be working! We just have to see if the device is reading the correct temperature values so cross our fingers that it is.
Day 24
Yeah so our thermistor isn’t reading the correct values. We tried changing the resistances of our circuitry and after getting some readings like -75 degrees Celsius and 137 degrees Celsius, we finally got an accurate reading. Yay! Now we have to see if the device will accurately read body temperatures.
Day 25
We prepped all day for a BBQ with our interns! They came over later in the afternoon and we cooked with them and got to see them outside of the Poly which was a lot of fun!
