It seems like the days couldn’t go any faster. Now that our internship is coming to a close (less than 10 days left!!) we are finalizing our projects.
A huge portion of our time is being spent on Morphine Tracker. With some minor touches being worked on at the moment, Morphine Tracker (MT) has greatly improved since the last time I talked about it. Yesterday, we went over the functionalities of it with Dr. Suave, the doctor in the palliative care clinic. He is a part of the Palliative Care Association (as mentioned in the last post) and was able to provide us a lot of feedback on what we can add to MT. Today, we ventured to Lilongwe to meet his mentor, Kathryn Hamling. Kathryn runs the pharmacy at Ndi moyo, and both Kathryn and Suave are active members of the Palliative Care Association in Malawi. Kathryn expressed great interest in MT and after going over the database with her, she inquired if we would be able to come to Ndi moyo to further train her staff to allow them to adopt it. Realizing that our time is limited and with Ndi moyo being several hours away, we scheduled our visit for the beginning of next week.
After sitting down with Suave during lunch, he told us about his history in palliative care. Being such an active member for PACM (Palliative Care Association for Malawi), he has traveled to other countries in southern Africa and seen many examples of palliative care systems, including their record keeping. His interest in MT is very strong, but he ensured us that although many others may have the same interest does not mean they have the desire or will to accept it right away. Kathryn exasperated how morphine dispensing needs to be legally, regularly, and accurately monitored– the very opposite of what is happening now. Some hospitals, like St. Gabriel’s and Ndi moyo, take their morphine tracking very seriously. Although done manually, it is kept up to date, even with the painstaking amount of time needed to produce records and count amounts manually monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Not every hospital has the manpower to do so. The greatest hurdle to battle: implementation. St. Gabriel’s and Ndi moyo are ready to implement MT and will do so in the next week. However, they already had the personnel and will to track morphine. But what about the other hospitals that may need an electronic database even more? Suave has told us PCAM has been looking into the problem of morphine usage reports for quite some time, but nothing has been done as a solution. Many problems can come up: lack of computers, lack of personnel knowing how to use the computers, lack of time to input the data recorded from that day or week, and much more. In the next ten days, implementing MT at St. Gabriel’s and Ndi Moyo can provide us with substantial feedback on tackling these problems, because if we can’t put a strong foot hold in these two, how will we be able to do so in other hospitals?
Future plans (for the next 10 days), purchase supplies for the stirrups, create a presentation for the hospital staff about our work during the internship, producing an updated DataPall manual as well as a MT manual, update DataPall reports, finish LCTemp testing, and last but not least, enjoy our final days in Namitete!
Next blog post: Namitete and Lilongwe