Friday, May 23, 2008

Today we traveled to Robin, a village near Bonbon (the beach we visited yesterday).  A group of visiting American nurses and doctors also joined us, along with a number of HHF employees (health agents, midwives, etc…).  We went to help with the health post prior to doing our teaching and screening with the adolescent girls.  Sadly, we almost lost two nursing students to car sickness while in route to Robin.  Luckily, as Hopkins nursing students, Kishma and Cezanne were able to throw up, recover and then proceed to work.  They also had the help of our experienced ED nurse and graduate student Michelle.  It was a close one.

We dove right in to working once we arrived in the village.  Meghan and Anne proceeded to do all the weights and blood pressures for the prenatal clinic.  Meghan also tested their hemoglobins prior to the women receiving their syphilis tests.  Anthony helped one of the visiting American physicians and one of the RNs do pediatric assessments, helping with their diagnoses and interpreting medication names for them.  Megan worked with a family practice doctor doing adult and pediatric assessments, providing all the charting and some translation.  Susan weighed babies, helped with screening the adolescent girls and helped with neonatal assessments.

All of us had the opportunity to also work with Sister Sophie, who was kind enough to walk us through prenatal assessments (measuring fundal heights, discovering the babies’ positions, and using dopler to listen to the babies’ heartbeats).  We also saw her do sonograms, and a few of us actually did them ourselves!

We were so busy with all the health post activities, we decided to split up and half of us worked with the adolescent girls.  Cezanne and Kishma, somewhat recovered from their car sickness, joined with Michelle and our fearless leader, Sara, to perform the skits and do the teaching and screening for the adolescent girls.  It felt like between us all we saw the entire village!