For an hour, nurses were taught to use an ordinary thermometer. They explained to them that by taking blood, they will not cause permanent harm to the patient, but they can save their lives. This is also the education of future Sudanese nurses, whose lecturers this year were also Jarka Jakubeková and Karin Liptáková. In the first lesson, they were taught to record their body temperature in a table. "We thought it would be a five-minute job. They had a pre-drawn table in which they had to find the corresponding value of the patient's body temperature. However, the students often acted very mechanically, as if they lacked logical thinking. We discussed recording body temperature with them for more than an hour and practiced for another week," describe Karin Liptáková and Jarka Jakubeková, internal doctoral students at the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Work Trnava University.
They spent three months in South Sudan. They worked at the hospital in Mapuordita as lecturers of educational courses for medical staff and also as nurse supervisors. The hospital in Mapuordita has been managed by the University of Trnava in cooperation with the Diocese of Rumbek since 2001, when it was renovated in cooperation with the eRko organization/Dobrá novina program. The hospital provides health care to patients who come from the surrounding area, sometimes up to 60 km. It's a two-day journey on foot, three days with a child.
Volunteer after school
A professional medical school was established next to the hospital. There, Slovak health workers educate future nurses and nursing assistants, who did not know much about health science until then. Jarka and Karin taught anatomy, physiology, microbiology and computer work. 14 men and two women attended the certified course. "The students were very diligent and hardworking. They appreciated that we came to educate them and tried their best not to disappoint us," the lecturers describe. Even after class, students wrote notes to each other under the trees near the school. At the end of the course, they had to pass the final test, 93 percent of them were successful. "It was very important to explain all information in detail and comprehensibly, and to consolidate new knowledge with it through repetition and many examples from practice," the Slovak doctoral students explain their strategy.
With regard to culture
The conditions in which future health professionals live and grow up in South Sudan are very different from what Slovak doctors or social workers who travel there to impart their knowledge are used to.
"Many students there live in the bush, they do not know a latrine, toilet, shower, or any of the devices and tools used in the work of a nurse," say the doctoral students. Moreover, as they say, the Dinka tribe, from which the students came, is very strong and stubborn. Dinks rarely show pain. "Perhaps this is also why the students approached the patients harshly and without tenderness."
The Dinka are a proud pastoral tribe that lives by its traditions. The lack of blood donors is therefore also a problem for doctors. The Dinka believe that if someone takes their blood, it will no longer be produced in their body. Parents often prefer to let their child die instead of saving their life by donating blood. "We had a class in which we lectured the students about hematopoiesis, the amount of blood in the human body and its renewal. Then we showed them the blood collection technique. But even when I took a small amount of blood from a colleague, they feared for her life," says Jarka Jakubeková.
This is also why both doctoral students say that training medical personnel in South Sudan requires patience. And also constant control during their practice in the hospital, which is part of the courses.
What are latrines and showers for?
Patient education is also part of the Trnava University project. It is focused, for example, on the patient's hygienic habits, education in the field of prevention of infectious diseases and supportive treatment of infectious diseases. They mainly teach through visual demonstrations, because most of the inhabitants here are illiterate.
Practicing nurses are gradually joining the Slovak experts. "They taught newly admitted patients where the latrine and showers are, what they are used for and why it is important to use them, that is, the prevention of infectious diseases. They gradually entered the data correctly in the patients' health documentation, the bed linen remained arranged all day long," say former nursing education lecturers.
By the way, bed linen. "Initially, their job was to keep the patients' bed linen neat and clean, and when we found the beds unmade during the inspection, they argued that they had made the linens in the morning. They didn't understand that everything had to be checked and made again during the day."
The education of medical personnel in South Sudan, as well as the construction of hospitals and making health care accessible to the population, are a long way to go. Slovak projects prove that tapes in partial finish lines can be broken. With patience and understanding of difference.
Magdalena Vaculčiaková Health projects in South Sudan
Aid in the field of healthcare in South Sudan has been provided by several Slovak organizations for ten years. The University of Trnava and the University of Health and Social Work of St. Elizabeth regularly send doctors to rural hospitals, eRKO finances the supply of medicines and the technical support of hospitals from the Dobrá novina collection. As part of a project financed by SlovakAid, the University of Trnava also focuses on the education of local health workers and the professional training of nurses, midwives, prevention and hygiene. In 2011, 3 health projects in South Sudan were approved from the state budget as part of SlovakAid in the total amount of over three quarters of a million euros: mobile health service (Magna Children in Need project), strengthening of health care for mothers and children (Trnava University) and building health care (o. z. SAVIO).
The article was published in the Development Aid - Fall 2011 newsletter. It is published by Platforma mimovládnych rozvojových organizácií (MVRO), which is an association of legal entities - an umbrella organization of 31 (23 regular members and 8 observers) Slovak non-governmental organizations that deal mainly with foreign development and humanitarian aid. http://www.mvro.sk