Blog 2 from Becca in South Africa
So i think the last day i left off was on monday, so i will start with tuesday. we went to a nursing orientation at NMMU and learned about their curriculum there. They have to have 4,500 clinical hours before they graduate and for those of you who don’t know at VCU we only need to have 1,000 hours if that. It is ridiculous what they go through. The classes they take are pretty much the same. We learned about the different kinds of nurses here just like we have LPNs RNs and CNAs in the USA. Then we learned about the health care system in South Africa and then we learned what we were actually going to do while we were here. When we are in the clinics on tuesdays and wednesdays we will be doing primary health care like a doctors office in the US. The difference here is that there are no doctors in the primary health clinics here. They only have nurses who take the health history, do the physical assessment, diagnose the patient, and then write a prescription. These are just regular RNs who write the prescription which was really cool.
The rest of the day tuesday we all hung out and caught up on some sleep.
On wednesday we made our first trip our to the clinics. we went in pairs with the exception that one clinic had three people. I went to Chatty clinic with Rachel. It took us three hours to get there because we were the last ones to get dropped off and the driver was constantly getting lost. When we got there, there were lines and lines of people waiting to be treated. They had a separate section for children and for people with TB. I was assigned to a nurse and we sat in an examination room behind a desk that had a big book that logged all the patients in, what they were here for, and how they were treated. Remember that there are no computers here. Then the patient came in and handed the nurse their chart because they have a system where the patient takes their chart home and brings it each time they come. The nurse took notes while the patient described the problem and then the nurse began the physical assessment. The first couple of times i watched the assessment and then she started letting me do it myself. The hardest part was working the blood pressure cuff because they are not automatic here and i had to pump it up myself. I only saw a few patients because we were so late getting there. That night Dr. Moon took us out to dinner to hear about our day.
The next day we were scheduled to do home based visits. We started the day by going to a local elementary school in a very poor area. The vice principal gave us a tour and explained how the school worked. They didn’t charge the students any money to go there and in return if something went wrong with the school then a parent who had that skill would fix it for free. They also had sewing rooms and carpentry rooms where the parents of the community could use and in return use their skills to fix the school desks and sew uniforms. It was very cool how the whole thing worked. At one point the children got out for a recess and then we started taking pictures. Immediately they swarmed us because no one has a camera to take their picture. I guess it makes them feel important. Then we went to a shack of a man who has HIV and asked him questions about it and prayed with him which was very nice. After that some we all went to a local craft market on the beach and bought a few presents for people. It was fun because you bartered with these people and they had some very cool things. That night we went out to eat and walked around the boardwalk and went into some of those shops.
Today we went to visit the traditional healer. He dressed in normal clothes but spoke with a very thick accent that was almost hard to understand. We went to his house and listened to him talk about the roles of traditional healers in the community and how the government feels about them. They take on a spiritual approach to heeling and talk to your ancestors to heal you. It was interesting and a bit confusing at the same time. Tomorrow we leave for Tsitsikamma which i’m very excited about.
Rebecca