Orientation to Clinical!

Monday September 12, 2011

First Day of Clinicals!!



So today was orientation of the 7 different clinical sites we will all be working at throughout the entire semester. Two of them are muslim hospitals called Gatesville Hospital and Mitchell’s Plain Hospital where we will be on their pediatric and maternity floors. For this first week I will be starting at Gatesville hospital which we had a full orientation of and I am very excited to begin my clinicals there! It was amazing to see the differences and similarities between their hospitals and the ones that I have worked at in the states. From what I could tell they definitely do not have as much state-of-the-art equipment as we do but they simply have what is needed to given a patient adequate care and nurturing love to help them get well. I will be excited to see many more differences between South African hospitals and the US.

We then went to the two clinical sites where we have the option to volunteer at on weekends and our days off. The first is The Red Cross Hospital for Pediatrics which is the largest hospital for kids in all of South Africa. It is also directly in front of our house and very convenient! The hospital was huge but the equipment and overall layout of the hospital was very dated. We got to walk through the wards and see all of the kids and I can tell you I have never seen so many sick kids in one area. It’s so heartbreaking to see a child less than a year old with an NG tube or a trach to help them breathe. The saddest thing I saw today was the burn unit where there were many children all bandaged up but still so full of life. They welcomed us with excitement and waved enthusiastically at us, it was so touching to see.

From there we also visited a Pediatric-Orthopedic clinic where children go for surgery and rehabilitation. We got to spend some time visiting with the kids and I noticed with the younger children it was a little bit harder to communicate because we had a bit of a lanaguage barrier. I was still able to chat with one boy about his batman sheets (I was pretty jealous) and give and receive a thumbs up and peace sign with a toddler. Quite adorable. Needless to say I cannot wait to learn how to communicate further with these kids and learn how to treat them for their many nursing needs.

We also went to a clinic called Themba Care which is a palliative care facility for children with HIV/AIDS. They receive nursing care, anti-retroviral treatment, and lots of love from the staff. I cannot wait to work there more and get to know each of the little ones. From what we saw there today there can be quite a range in the level of sickness in the children. Many of them ran straight up to us and gave us hugs and could be seen running around and so full of life. It is great to see that the medications for children with HIV are very effective and can give these children an extended and great quality of life.
Another clinic we went to is called Beautiful Gates and very similar to Themba Care except that the overall goal of the facility is to have the children go home to a safe environment.

We also went to Tafelsig (probably spelled that wrong), which is a walk-in clinic in the townships for the general population. We are going to be working primarily with the children and babies coming in weighing them and giving them immunizations which should be a lot of fun! The only frustrating thing about the clinic is that there are sooo many people there that can sometimes be stuck waiting all day just to be seen by a clinician. At least I definitely know I will be making a difference there!
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I’m sure I will updating you about each individual clinical site as I go there, but til then let me just say that these clinical sites are so much cooler than Connecticut! Til tomorrow!