Mulanje Mission Hospital.

We arrived in Malawi on Tuesday, after travelling since Sunday night. On Wednesday we explored the hospital and local area. The hospital is made up of several buildings, each housing a different ward, there are also out-patient, radiography and theatre buildings. The buildings all look fairly new and are nice and cool inside. The equipment is more basic, X-rays are manually developed in a dark room and there is often a shortage of supplies. Things are re-used here, where we have cardboard and plastic in the UK they have metal which is washed and re-used.

We started placement on Thursday, I am currently in the female ward and Lynsey is in the male ward. I had a quiet first shift, there was only six patients. Nursing here is different from Scotland as here patients have Guardians who are responsible for feeding and cleaning them, so there is slightly less for the nurses to do. I observed one admission, here the student nurses cannulate and have more responsibility for the patients. The language barrier is a slight issue as many of the patients do not speak English, luckily though the staff are more than happy to translate and we will always be working alongside a nurse anyway. Friday was a busier shift, I got to do two I.M injections and assisted with an emergency admission. A women came in having a severe asthma attack, the hospital currently has no inhalers or nebulizers which would be the best course of treatment, instead we used I.V medication and admitted her for further treatment and observation.

We discussed our project with the medical director who seemed very positive about it. She is going to talk to the local nursing college to hopefully team us up with some local nursing students. It is likely we will hold our workshops at the nearby secondary school, as this age group has an increasing number of cases of HIV. The students are also taught in English which is very helpful as it will be easier to lead discussions with them.