D-i-e

Describe

Overall nursing. I heard of an incident which really bothered me. I had heard about similar case before but this happened to my collegue. Mother came with her newborn child to show it to a nurse. The nurse did check the baby and found him dead. The nurse then continued her work and the mother was left crying.

Interpret
Like I said in my previous blogpost, in Uganda, nurse has a wayy more patients than here in Finland. There are alot things to do. But while I was treated for my back pain in a local hospital with a descent reputation I kinda bumbed into same issue. Some nurses were caring, friendly and listened to patienst while others were ignorant and even rude. This seemed to be more common than I thought in Uganda. Great variation how to treat patients.  Some were frierndly and others..cold. Why this is that way, I can only speculate. Maybe its because of rush. Maybe you dont have enough energy to give love, compassion to others. Maybe it has even something to do with culture: you really cant show your pain in Uganda. You might even get laughed at if you do. Specially labouring women, they cant really make sound when giving birth or they might get mistreated, laughed.

Evaluation

The way we live, is made from pieces like education, culture, family, even friends. Uganda has had big  difficulties in like 40 years, including reign of Idi Amin. It is a poor country. Harsh enviroment. You have to struggle. Maybe that is one reason why people there are like lions. They dont weep so much. They struggle to survive and maybe there isnt any place for "weakness". This same kind of thing happened here in Finland 70 years ago, when war ended. People were busy building Finland and there were so many wounds. Spiritual, mental, physical. I think people didnt have resources to deal with the pain and scars so what they did is they build. They build Finland as it is now. No mourning but many suicides. How we deal with our pain, past, is individual. But maybe there are some common elements  concerning us as a human specie. Love, compassion, we all grave that. But how can you give those if you are a broken spirit.



Mark 12:30-31

 ^"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

³¹ And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

"Letter" home or memories from trip

I was having my work placement in Uganda, Kampala. I study nursing in Centria for a second year. 

Reason I named this as a "memories from trip" is, that I had to come back to Finland earlier. I had an accident that worsen my condition (Discus Prolapsis) and had to come for an operation back to Kokkola.

Uganda was nice. When we first arrived Entebbe, Uganda around 5am in the sunday morning, I could´nt help but wonder how smalll the airport was! After all, Uganda has around 42 million residents. But everything was well organinized by our host university. We had a driver waiting for us and we soon got to get going. 

City was quiet that time of day but we could still see alot people moving by car, walking etc. First thing I noticed was the poor condition of roads. Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world.

It took around 1.5 hours to get to our hotel and in some point we were in disbelief, does the driver really know where we are going. But we got safely (and tired) to our hotel and that day, we mainly rested. 

Next week we started working by getting to know our host university, Clarke International University. It was located in top floors over an hospital. Staff there was very friendly and we got to taste local cuisine. We spend the week by visiting different work placement places, mainly hospitals and health centers. This was the week when I hurt my back. Roads are awful over there. And the traffic..

I managed to still work by the power of medicine for 4 weeks, first 2 weeks in Rotom health center which was mainly for elders but had younger customers aswell. That time was amazing, we got to see how people live in rural areas. We had a "party" where we praised and sung and had a nice dinner after that. I learned alot about laboratory work. Patients were regurally inspected of malaria, HIV etc. Staff was friendly and guided us. 

Next 2 weeks I spend in Angelina Health Center. It was class 3 health center (scale is 1=best, 4=lowest). It is kind of same nursing than here in Finland, we give medicines, take care of the patients etc same way BUT there is alot more patieets for 1 nurse than here in Finland. Overall rate is that they have 1 nurse for around 1400 clients and here in Finland its around 12 (?)nurses for 1000 people. Example, there was 1 day a week, when there was vaccinations for small children. There might have been like 15 people in a small room, and nurse would just give vaccinations for the child and call next. It took around 2 minutes to give all the vaccinations for a child. That was efficient on its way..

Over all, I miss Uganda. I miss the team, my fellow students. I cherish the memories we had together and would invite anyone to try travelling. You get hooked.

Stay alive

Kyösti