Not too much happened this week. Work was a little weird
because we were trying to speak to nurses about the history of the clinic to
get information for a paper for class, so we had a lot of down time while we
waited for them to be free. Therefore, we didn’t have set rotations so I ended
up in a lot of different places this week. One place I was in for a little while was
triage, where we take vitals and ask patients why they are there that day. I
had never done triage before so when I got there, I asked the nurse to brief me
on the different protocols. However, she was not able to give me any help and
threw me right into. I had to keep asking questions to understand the process but after a while I had a general understanding of what to do.
Besides that, I spent a lot of time shadowing doctors, which
is amazing. I definitely learn the most sitting with them. They make sure to
explain everything they’re thinking and doing and ask for my input sometimes to
get me thinking like a doctor. I’ve also learned a lot about the healthcare
system here through speaking with them which is really interesting. There are a
lot more similarities to home than I had thought. The other thing I haven’t
really considered before is that the clinic I am working at is drastically
different from home because it is a government funded clinic that provides free
health care in a poor area. There are private clinics that are very similar to
what we have at home, but I just haven’t been exposed to them. For example, in
a previous post I wrote about how the nurses are much less likely to give
medications to patients. Beyond them not wanting to fall to the demands of
patients and give them what they don’t need, they don’t even have the resources
to frivolously give out medications. Whereas at the private clinics here, the
patients have to pay for the medications, so doctors/nurses are much more
lenient writing out prescriptions.
Beyond that, I’m glad to finally have a free weekend. I
really needed time to relax and to catch up on class work and my thesis. A few
of us went to the movies Thursday night, which was awesome. We saw Deadpool and
it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
Then today was the first day of my activist project! I’m
working with the Fire Fighters Football Club in Khayelitsha, which is an
extremely poor township in Cape Town. This club is a place for the boys to go
to keep them out of gangsterism and drug use, which are very prevalent there.
Unfortunately, they have minimal equipment and money, and their parents can’t
afford transportation to get to their games. So I will be spending my time
helping with practices and supporting them at games, which I love! We went to
games today and got to coach one of the teams for their warm up. The boys are
so amazing! I hung out with some of them while we watched other boys play a
game and I had so much fun. As part of the project, we will also be fundraising
for the team to get the boys shin guards and other equipment we find that they
need. We also want to put money towards tournament entry fees and food for
those days as the boys often can’t bring food. So, if anyone reading this is
interested in helping out, please check out our Go Fund Me page! (https://www.gofundme.com/FireFightersClub/)
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| Back row: Eric, Derek, Mariko, Abby & Coach Power in front of them--so amazing Fire Fighter football players |
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