February 16th, 2012 by Ruth (Communications Manager)
Work the World students could be in with a chance to win some serious cash towards their nursing placements.
The Cavell Nurses Trust are offering £2000 for students to “submit a project or model of nursing you wish to explore,either as a small research project or a review of UK practice against care in another country”.
The nurses on the ward
This ties in perfectly with our nursing electives in Ghana. We work with the largest government run health care institution in the Western Region, offering big, busy wards with excellent supervisors. Our strong relationships with key nursing staff mean that students will immediately be involved with the day to day routines of a Ghanaian ward – perfect for a comparative study.
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February 16th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
I’ve stayed pretty well connected while I’ve been here. Good phone reception,Internet and even free wifi here and there. That is all about to change though because I am heading to the land of no phone reception, no power, bucket showers and drop toilets and living in a traditional Maasai village for one week – mud hut and all!
Our bus.... we had to stop A LOT!
Imagine your life without television. Imagine no phones, computers or internet. In fact, remove every element of your life that requires a power source. Vacuum cleaners, irons, ovens, microwaves, refrigerators, washing machines, hairdryers. All of it. And then take away your car as well. Your only transport is those two things at the end of your legs. There are no coffee shops in your life anymore, no restaurants, only fields of maize and bananas. If your want to eat something, you either need to grow it or kill it. If you want shelter, you need to build it. You have no real need for money anymore – cows are your currency. Your religion is nature itself. Your life revolves around the seasons and the weather. And life and death is a visible circle – part of everyday life.
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February 16th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
So far, when anyone from home asks me to describe what it’s like here, I tend to say, ‘it’s just so different from anything else I’ve ever experienced before’. I still haven’t come up with a better description. Things aren’t better or worse here, they are just……different. I wish I could walk around with a video camera to give you a real sense of it but you’ll have to be satisfied with a few snapshots instead. These were just some moments where I thought…’you know what, that’s different’.
For example….
Construction techniques.... they're different!
The fluorescent lemonade... that's different!
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February 15th, 2012 by Ruth (Communications Manager)
Many healthcare students are keen to spend some of their career working in the developing world with humanitarian organisations.
MSF recommend that all students interested in joining their aid organisation gain experience living in a developing country before they apply, if possible using their student electives to work in an overseas medical environment.
FoMSF fun run
Unfortunately, MSF cannot host student electives – it is not possible to guarantee the supervisory component required by universities, locations are often unstable and unsuitable and all MSF doctors on the ground need to be fully qualified.
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February 15th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
So you’ve arrived at the decision to go on an elective. You’ve picked your distant, exotic sounding location and made sure you will be close to the ocean so you can go and lie on the beach to work on your tan on your day off, and you’ve already read the Lonely Planet guide cover to cover, plus you’ve even learned how to say ‘hello’ and ‘cheers’ in the language spoken at your destination. All set then…
This is all well and good, but what is the real reason you want to go abroad for your elective? – To gain valuable experience of course…but what else? Here are 6 other things you will step off the plane with when you get back.
1)Foundation Skills with No Resource
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February 14th, 2012 by Ruth (Communications Manager)
Many students who plan to undertake a healthcare elective in a developing country are driven by the idea they can make a real difference to the hospital or clinic they are going to be working in. They see it as a chance to move from the role of spectating or doing basic work under supervision, instead using their skills to help those less fortunate. But is that a realistic expectation?
An elective in an developing country can offer lots of opportunities, but as Mitchell Blake in the Medical Student Journal of Australia found out, things can be very different to how you imagined…..
“Prior to my first day, I talked to some international students who had been working (there) for some weeks. I had expressed my enthusiasm to practice as much medicine as possible and maybe make some management decisions, I was laughed at. I also expressed my interest in developing my procedural skills…“You won’t get to do that much,” replied one of the international students quashing my hopes, “you’ll be lucky to take blood.” Indeed, venepuncture was the only procedural skill I practiced on my elective.”
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February 13th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
Neil, my fiance, was keen to see what the Physiotherapy department looked like at Mt Meru Hospital so I went off and did a little investigating for him. I came across the lovely Flora, who is head of the ‘department’ and who is possibly the nicest person I have met at the hospital. Here she is (sorry it is such a bad picture).
The infrared
The day I went there was an inpatient day where she goes around the wards so there were no patients in the department. Tuesdays and Thursdays are outpatients and I think she sees about 20 a day. They are mostly rehab cases following burns or fractures but there is the odd case of Guillain-Barre or paralysis.
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February 10th, 2012 by Ruth (Communications Manager)
I was one of five dentistry students from University College Cork who decided to do a two week dental outreach programme in Ghana between fourth and final year.
We had heard about Work the World from students two years above us. They had a great experience with them and found them really helpful to deal with. The huge benefit of going on an organised trip like this is that it makes it all very easy. Dentistry is a very busy course and trying to organise something like an outreach during the year would, I think, be close to impossible. Contact coming up to your departure date is a huge help and knowing there’s someone at the end of a phone to answer any questions really puts your mind at ease.
We chose to fly to Ghana three or four days before the programme started to see a bit of the country. Three days on the beach before starting work didn’t go amiss. Getting around in Ghana proved fairly straightforward; keeping your wits about you, and once you get used to the hectic streets of Accra, the capital and country was fairly manageable. The Saturday night after arriving in Ghana we met in Accra with Frank and Joe who’d be running the programme and the five students from the University of Leeds we’d be working with.
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February 9th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
Mt Meru looming!
Well tomorrow I am going to climb a mountain. No, not Kilimanjaro. That would just be so obvious! Instead I am going to try and conquer Mt Meru. It is a lot less touristy than Kili and a bit shorter (I think its peak is 1km lower than Kili) but at 4550m it is still a pretty big hill. Apparently there is lots of wildlife on Mt Meru like buffalo and giraffes so we will be walking with a ranger rather than a guide so that he can keep us out of danger (presumably by shooting anything that comes too close!).
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February 6th, 2012 by Guest Blogger
I changed departments at the hospital this week. I had to say goodbye to the wards and theatre and all the little burns kids who had surprised me so much with their strength, and take myself off to casualty.
Ester
The picture is of little Ester – the girl I saw previously who hugged me. I still can’t believe she’d come up and hug me after what we’d put her through in theatre. Any child at home would have run the other way at at the sight of me! She is also a good lesson (as are most of the other kids on the wards) about why your mum always used to tell you not to play with matches. Ester was alone while she was playing with them and so no one was around to help her when her clothes caught alight.
So now I am in casualty and seeing pain on a whole other level all together. As I left to come write this, a man was carried in with a broken L femur, R hip, R humerus AND L clavicle. He already looked like a bag of bones (he was painfully thin) but now sadly, it was a bag of broken bones. The road accidents here are brutal.
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