This past week has been both really exciting and really busy! We got to spend some time this week working in the HIV clinic to see how their database system works in comparison to DataPall. St. Gabriel’s hospital has HIV clinic three days a week and on Saturdays for kids who are in school. It seems like the HIV clinic sees about 150 patients in one day and we personally probably saw between 80-100 patients the day we worked there. In order for us to see the database system as well as just help out for a while we were weighing patients and then checking them in, asking if there were any problems with the medications, and sending their information to the pharmacy to renew their prescription. Getting to do some hands on work interacting with patients was an awesome experience, even with the language barrier, although we did pick up some unusual phrases that go beyond casual conversation while working there. Working in the HIV clinic was definitely a wild experience, I couldn’t help but compare it to how things run in the states. A fair amount of patients when they come to clinic don’t even see a clinician while they are there. There is very little patient privacy, and simply because of the lack of resources each patient is counseled for less than a minute before the next person is called in.
The database system that they use was entirely donated by the CDC and is based around barcode stickers that each patient has on their health passports. After watching how it works, we are definitely going to encourage the nurses to use something similar in Palliative Care that will make DataPall run smoother. One of the main problems with using the database is that we end up having multiple patient ID numbers that correspond to the same person because the name is constantly being spelled differently. Sometimes that patient will report their name in Chichewa when they come, and other times they will report their name in English. If the nurses put stickers with the patient’s ID number on the health passports, it may help to eliminate this problem.
Two of our professors from Rice came this week to check up on the work at St. Gabriel’s as well as talk to us about joining the project going on in Blantyre, about four hours away from Namitete. The project consists of doing research in pediatrics in multiple hospitals around Malawi for a past BTB project, the CPAP. It was definitely nice to see some familiar faces and we are excited to help out with that project while also getting the opportunity to do some in-country traveling to other hospitals!
Other than that we have just been focusing on cleaning up the data that is going into DataPall to ensure the doctors and nurses are getting correct patient statistics. It has been a lot of tracking down paper records and filling data gaps in the system.
In other news, Hannah and I have joined the hospital’s Netball team! Netball is basically basketball but no backboard, with the rules of ultimate Frisbee, played with a soccer ball. Thankfully the nurses have been very patient in teaching us how to play!
Tomorrow Sister Justa from the hospital is going to show us around Namitete, more to come after that.
