Well after an uneventful evening of looking like twins and drinking a very small amount of wine Lindsay and I formulated a game plan for today.
The day started off my phone call from the UK which confirmed my placements in the hospital in Ghana!!! As per usual, Lindsay and I are doing the exact same thing... if you read her post the other day you now know that we will be spending just over a week in Labor & Delivery, a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a few days in an HIV outreach clinic and a few days in a child and reproductive health clinic. The lady we both talked to in the UK told us a bit about the regional hospital we will be working at which was really cool to hear!
The regional hospital, which is the largest hospital in the western region of Africa has 11 beds on its Labor and Delivery unit. Despite this they don't turn expecting mothers away so its is fairly normal for women to give birth on a mattress on the floor of the unit. Another huge cultural difference there is that when mothers are giving birth it is expected to be natural (including episiotomies -I cringed when I heard this) and not only this they are expected to be silent when giving birth, and when they are not silent they are slapped or struck. They warned us about this because it can be an eerie culture shock for some nursing students! It was quite load of information to wake up to this morning!
As for the rest of the day, we intend to get some business cards printed off to leave with our donation box and drop it off at Johnny's store. Our next plan of attack is to get 4 passport sized photos taken to send with our visa applications so that we are actually allowed in Ghana. After that we are heading off to coffee with our well travelled friend Amy who has been giving us brilliant insight into where we should be going in the UK and how to get there! If that wasn't a productive day enough we are going straight from there to our 4H project meeting where we will be taking our group skating!
-K
The day started off my phone call from the UK which confirmed my placements in the hospital in Ghana!!! As per usual, Lindsay and I are doing the exact same thing... if you read her post the other day you now know that we will be spending just over a week in Labor & Delivery, a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a few days in an HIV outreach clinic and a few days in a child and reproductive health clinic. The lady we both talked to in the UK told us a bit about the regional hospital we will be working at which was really cool to hear!
The regional hospital, which is the largest hospital in the western region of Africa has 11 beds on its Labor and Delivery unit. Despite this they don't turn expecting mothers away so its is fairly normal for women to give birth on a mattress on the floor of the unit. Another huge cultural difference there is that when mothers are giving birth it is expected to be natural (including episiotomies -I cringed when I heard this) and not only this they are expected to be silent when giving birth, and when they are not silent they are slapped or struck. They warned us about this because it can be an eerie culture shock for some nursing students! It was quite load of information to wake up to this morning!
As for the rest of the day, we intend to get some business cards printed off to leave with our donation box and drop it off at Johnny's store. Our next plan of attack is to get 4 passport sized photos taken to send with our visa applications so that we are actually allowed in Ghana. After that we are heading off to coffee with our well travelled friend Amy who has been giving us brilliant insight into where we should be going in the UK and how to get there! If that wasn't a productive day enough we are going straight from there to our 4H project meeting where we will be taking our group skating!
-K