Ann's-Mercy-Africa-Service-Trip

Hi All,

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote. Today I want to tell you about Community on the hospital wards. The hospital on ship is not like hospitals in the US where each patient may have a room of their own or at the most one roommate. On board the ship patients stay all together on wards. The wards each have 2 rooms with 8 patients in each room.

Each patient has a bed. Under their bed is a bed for a caregiver who stays with the patient in the hospital. All of the children have a parent or other adult in their lives staying with them. Many of the adult patients also have someone staying with them. The caregivers’ job is to hold and care for the child, to advocate for them, to comfort them, to help them to bathe, dress, and eat.

So each room has 8 patients, & 8 caregivers in a room about twice the size of a typical hospital room in the US. . Seems like a lot of people right? But that is not all! There are also 4-5 Malagasy (the language in Madagascar) interpreters, at least that many nurses, also Hospital Chaplains, Wound nurses, and physical and occupational therapists. So the wards are crowded places!

One might think that patients might long for more privacy, but that is not what I see. What I see are caregivers banding together to help each other, by watching each other’s children so they can go to the bathroom, or by braiding another child or a mom’s hair. The patients also play together on the ward. Some of the adults play UNO with the kids. Adult patients play UNO or dominoes with other patients or with nurses or translation crew. We had one of our adult patients who led the kids in exercises every morning!

I do not see patients closing their curtains unless they are changing clothes or using a bedpan or urinal. They will specifically open the curtains in order to be a part of the ward community.

Each day the doctors, head nurse, pharmacist, dietician, PT’, OT wound nurse do rounds going bed to bed, making plans for what will happen each day with each patient and communicating that to the patient and caregivers. Sometimes right after rounds, when the nurses and PT”s and OTs would like to get going with the patients, the chaplains come around for prayer and singing worship. All of the Malagasy patients and language interpreters joyfully join in the singing. Because the hospital world is so different and can be scary, these times of singing and worship and community are a great comfort to patients and families.

A little later in the morning patients and nurses and translators bring a speaker and play music and all of the patients dance up and down the hall way together.

There is so much joy and singing and praying and playing cards or games that it can be challenging to do all of the PT, OT and nursing tasks that need to be done. But, this community is so important.

In the afternoon, there is more walking and dancing in the hallway. AND patients get to go to Deck 7. This is the hour each day that patients get to breath outside, non air conditioned air. Again, there is playing and singing, and praying.

Once patients are ready to be discharged from the hospital they go to the Hope Center which is about a mile and a half away. Patients and caregivers stay at the Hope Center and are transported back to the dock for outpatient nursing or PT or OT visits.

So, the patients from the ward will meet again at the Hope Center or in the rehab tent. They will continue to be community there. Older patients encourage the children and mom’s. Patients play while they are waiting their turn to be seen. Sometimes we treat two kids together at the same time so that the play based therapy is more fun.

There is much to be learned here. In particular, those of us from the “First world” could learn a lot about community from the Malagasy patients on Mercy Africa.