Tuesday 27th September 2016

A brilliant day today. We all spent the morning in the hospital, doing various things: Frankie in C-sections and having to help with neonatal resuscitation (with a good outcome and baby on NICU); Sandy on a surgical round and doing lots of teaching on moving and handling; Ally on the paeds round of 40 children under 5, with extra arrivals coming into the ward all the time; and Liv doing a teaching ward round on the female medical ward with a great variety of diseases and pathology. We’re all learning the meaning of ‘Africa time’ after the surgical ward round started 2 hours late, the medical ward had no doctor (and hasn’t had a doctor for two weeks), while the paeds round carried on well into the afternoon.

We were all very impressed with one student nurse who was working on the surgical ward, despite being on IV treatment (with a cannula in situ and a bandanna wrapped round it!) After another delicious lunch of avocado salad, Frankie and Ally went off to the university to meet with Anna Agnes and the team to plan the next four weeks of teaching, while Liv and Sandy started the BASIC DHS course teaching with a session on setting up the ITU at Lira Hospital. We discussed the patient demographics, appropriate and inappropriate admissions, and have started to create the ITU philosophy.

This evening we’ve been to the market and ordered some very glamorous African outfits – let’s hope Poole theatres are ready for Frankie in her new tribal print scrubs…

Olivia Davies