COUNTRY: Nepal
PROGRAM: UniBreak - Kathmandu
PROJECT: Community Healthcare projects
WRITTEN BY: Julie Stocks
Namaste! Well what a whirlwind first week we have all had! Flying into Kathmandu airport we were welcomed with the hustle and bustle straight away. It was everything we had imagined, noisy, crazy and dusty! Arriving at the project house to meet the other members of the group and Rajesh’s family, everyone was buzzing with excitement. The following two days were primarily aimed at orientating us all around the area where we will be living for the next month. Here, we learnt about how and where to take the microbus to our placements (which is an experience in itself, nice and cosy packing more than 20 people in a normally 8-10 seater van!). We were welcomed with a traditional dinner of dahlbaht, pickle and a cauilflower curry, whilst learning to eat with our hands, which is almost second nature to us now after a week here.
Once orientated we got to meet our families and move in to our new homes. At first it was slightly overwhelming but this is where we have gotten to embrace the culture and traditions of this amazing country. Some of us have already been lucky enough to be included in the families daily blessings where a tika is painted on to your forehead, and also get involved in some cooking lessons of the famous momo’s by our amaa (mother). Everyone is so friendly and hospitable, bending over backwards to make you feel at home.
Day 3 we all started our placements, and as student nurses and having worked in the field back in Australia, immediately differences were noticed between the two countries and their health care system. In our first week at Stupa community hospital we quickly realized we needed to be proactive and even a bit nosy if we wanted to see anything by asking lots of questions to figure out what was happening in the hospital. By doing so, we got to observe some endoscopy’s and also stayed back late purely to scrub in for surgeries including cholesystecomys. Through observing these, we noticed a different process in the sterilistation standards compared to home.
There is only one endoscopy tube, and this gets soaked in a hospital grade for 15 minutes before used for the next patient. They also only use a local aneasthetic for this procedure which evidently causes some discomfort for the patient. Again, all the staff at the hospital are so friendly and open to helping us and answering our questions, even giving us lots of tips for our weekend trips etc. Most of the days are spent on the general medical ward, working with fellow student nurses and fully qualified nurses. Learning that their education system is a lot longer than ours to become a nurse, we found that their course is a lot more indepth in regards to the physiology and science element of nursing. They have taught us so much already!! The equipment in the hospital is very basic, and it took us a while to figure out how they follow a strict fluid balance on a patient on IV therapy since they don’t have machines....lets just say they are really really good at maths! We found this very inspiring!
The other volunteers consist of physio, exercise physiology, counselling rehab and public health communicaton, and their placements are distributed over a range of rehabilitation and private physiotherapy centres. Most of us agreed that the initial feelings towards our placements were eyeopening and confronting, some more than others, as some of the situations the patients are in are quite sad. Towards the end of the week, everyone was feeling a lot more comfortable within their centres and building the relationships between the patients and staff was definately more apparant. Overall a positive first week was had and looking forward to seeing what this week has in store for us!!
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