My internship at the Maternity unit

Day 1

Today we’ve had our first day from the internship at the hospital. Nadine and I went to the maternity unit at the smaller hospital and the other girls stayed at the bigger hospital. Everyone was so nervous and excited.
Let me tell you something about my first day. First of all, we saw so many things! I don’t know if I’m able to tell you all about it. When we came in a baby was just born, he or she, I don’t know, was lying on a table and everyone walked away to get some stuff. We in holland really can’t imagine that! Because of safety.
Another very different thing is the fact that you have to be really careful with helping the pregnant woman. From my nature and what I learned in school I like to help people, we first have to let everyone do what they can by themselves, but if they say they can’t do it, or if I see that they are in pain, I help them.
Here it is a little different. You can’t just help a woman because she is in pain, if you do so or if she says that she needs help, she is found weekly. This is really going agains my principles so for me it’s hard to just ‘ignore’ the pain. I confess that when I was alone with a woman, and she was in pain, I helpen here where I could. They all laughed when I offered my help but took it as wel. I found this last thing very interesting.
When we came in we first had to change. It’s good to wear our uniforms because this way I feel a little more as a nurse. Because it’s our first real internship I really don’t know what I can do, what I’m suppose to do and what I have to expect. I found this the most difficult thing today. But I talked about this with some people and everyone said that I have to let all of it go and just observe, try to learn and figure out why people do what they do. So this is my good intention for tomorrow!

Day 2
The second that at our internship. A great day! We learned and saw so a lot! Let me tell you a little bit about our day.
First of al, I saw, and helped with my first delivery! It was so amazing, beautiful and extraordinary. I am not a midwife but for us as nurses it’s very interesting to watch how the mum and baby are doing and to pay attention for any complications. Luckily this baby and her (yes it was a beautiful girl with a head full of hair) mom where perfectly healthy. I added some great pictures about this experience

The rest of the day I learned to took the fetal heartbeat and the vital sings from the mother. We did it together with other students from Belgium. They are midwife studends, not nurses as we are. But they know a lot of other things so we can learn much from them. So it was a very busy but educational day!


Day 3

The third day it is! And we get more and more used to the Tanzanian life. Shopping at the market, bargaining, learning new words everyday and sitting in the daladala.

Today we did something new! We went to work on the back of a motorcycle! This is in one word, a-ma-zing! I loved it! It is a bit more expensive than the daladala, but still not expensive. A daladala cost 400 shilling (20 cents) and a motercycle ride is 1000 shilling (40 cents). It’s crazy rights!

In the hospital we had three delivery’s in one hour today! I assisted with a lady who was paralyzed from the bottom of both here legs.
It was a difficult delivery because she had not many strength to push but at the end, it all went very well. It was here third healthy baby, the first two were boys and now she had a girl. It was beautiful to see how happy and proud she was.
however, the ways things go are a lot different from Holland or the rest of Europe... sometimes this is hard to see, because we have other norms and values. To begin with the hygiene. There are almost no gloves, they barely do hand hygiene and then the sterile gloves. When they where sterile gloves the just touch other stuff. And things like a bladder catheter (witch has to be very sterile in Holland) does not need to be inserted with gloves, let alone sterile gloves and a sterile working place.
last night a little baby was born premature (28 weeks instead of 40). He was strong, breathing in his one but he needed to be transported to another, better, hospital. Before this could happen, the mother needed to pay for this but sadly she and her family didn't had the money. This kind of situations are so very frustrating because we want to help, we want to change things but we simply can't. We only can help in the district hospital with the little things that we can.
The baby died that night because nobody could pay for here care...

so I can tell that we see a lot of things that are wrong in our eyes, or that can cause for a lot of problems but the people simply don't have the knowledge and most of the time, they don't have the money and the supplies.


Day four and five

The last two days were so busy! But that's great because the times flies and we're never bored, there is so much to see everywhere.
The most special thing was probably a c-section of twins yesterday. Nadine and I were taking vital parameters on the pre-natal unit. We noticed that one of the woman was in a lot of pain and she wasn't responding very well on us. We told the other nurses and the doctor went by to examin here. And indeed, she wasn't doing very well. One of the baby's was in a breech presentation, that's why she had so many pain. The doctor divided to do a c-section. Nadine and I could prepare the mother for the operation and we took here to the major theater (that's the name of the operation room here in Tanzania).
This was quite the experience. With us in Holland we have hospital beds with weels. And we take patient in the elivator and over the hallway.
Here it's a little different, we don't have elivators, everything is one floor. And the different units are all small buildings. So we needing to get with the bed (with had weels but didn't rise, no they slided) and the patient over the hallway (with is outside) off the hill, into the other building. And I can tell you that is heavy, because is you don't hold the bed, the patient will role of the hill, and on the way back, he or she will role the other way around. So we say a c-section of twin today, this was incredibly beautiful and we learned so much. But everything around it is almost as interesting as the operation itself.

But the thing I keep adoring the most are the beautiful babies and how happy most of the moms are when everything is okay with them. Those are the moments for which I chose my job.