Week one on the children's ward with Sam and Tanner

Hello everyone!

Tanner and Sam here after a busy week on the children’s ward. We've definitely had a great experience and learned lots due to the very friendly healthcare team and patients at Lewanika Provincial Hospital. We have learned a lot about different conditions such as TB, malaria, fungal infections, sepsis, malnutrition, burns and fractures. Our daily routine started out with morning rounds with the doctors where we were routinely quizzed about the patients conditions, if we did not know the answers they were always great about teaching us. Next we would help out with the daily nursing tasks and then set up some play therapy in the afternoon. When we arrived on the ward there wasn’t much evidence of any play therapy, largely due to the the staffing shortage, high patient ratios and limited resources. Every afternoon we set up a large playroom in the kitchen and filled it with a large box of toys from the storage room that we supplemented with donations from Canada.  The children were hesitant at first but by the end of the week they were jumping out of their bed with excitement when it was time for play therapy. There were lots of smiles, lego, bubbles, music, hand puppet crafts and drawings that we would hang above their beds afterwards. 

My (Sam) favourite part of this week being on the children’s ward was interacting and playing with the children. There was this one child who wasn’t interacting with the other children during the play therapy, withdrawn, had a flat affect and wouldn’t speak. Seeing a child like this was very shocking for me, usually the children I see around this age were able to interact and play, smile/laugh/talk, and look around in curiosity. After 2 sessions of trying to get her engaged and playing we didn’t see much progress. However, on my last day on the children’s ward I went to check in and say hi to this child. I walked in to her room and started to wave, smile and talk to her, she looked me straight in the eyes and let out a little smile. This was the first time I have ever seen this child smile. It made me so excited and happy to see just a little smile from her. It showed me how vital the 2 days of short play therapy truly helps the children develop and get better. The time I spent on the  definitely enhanced my passion with working with children. I am so thankful for this experience.

I (Tanner) had many highlights of the week. When we first got on the ward we got a lot of stares and uncertain looks as we stuck out like a sore thumb. Initially the children were very shy and hesitant to interact with us but after a couple days we received huge smiles and lots of waves as soon as we stepped foot on the unit. Another highlight of my week was steeping outside of my comfort zone and advocating for a patient. There was a patient on the ward who was getting an extremely painful procedure done without any anaesthetic or pain killers, the screams could be heard across the ward. I immediately went over to see what was going on and started to advocate for some pain killers. Analgesia was then ordered but they unfortunately did not receive it until the procedure was already over. I then continued to advocate for this patient as I felt the appropriate measures were not being taken, with the help of Alex we were able to take this case to a higher level where it was taken very seriously and measures were put in place to make sure it would not happen again. The power gap between specialists, doctors and nurses is huge here which makes it extremely difficult for health care workers at a lower level to speak out and advocate for better care, this week I really felt that I was able to lead by example and create change by standing up for my patient. 

Each day after clinical our 10 person house has a large family dinner on the patio, we rotate cooking for the family every night so each one of us only has to cook once a week. Afterwards we usually go for a walk down the road to watch the sunset over the flood planes, this usually turns into a large crowd of children swarming us “mukuwa’s” and starting a soccer game in the sand. 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next weeks post!

Sincerely, 

Sam and Tanner

x