Posts tagged nurse

The heat does odd things to the body, the mind and energy levels. In the day I drink between 6–8 litres of water, and still only pee once or twice in the day. It is hard to concentrate and I am so tired that I want to sleep, but no matter how many wet clothes I wear at once, sleep just doesn’t come. This past week I was searching desperately for a solution, or at least a coping mechanism. Creativity was necessary but inspiration was lacking. Then I saw the buckets..
Trish Newport is working for MSF as a community outreach nurse in Chad. This is her fifth mission for MSF. When not on mission, she lives and works as a nurse in the Yukon, Canada.
Performing Reconstructive Surgery in the Gaza Strip My name is Mateja Stare. I’m 38 and I am from Slovenia. In Ljubljana, the capital, I work in the country’s largest hospital. I am an operating room nurse. I’ve just come back from the Gaza Strip, where I spent a month on mission with MSF. To say that you want “to help people in need” can sound a little superficial, and even frivolous, but it’s also true. I really believe that after you’ve organized your life and everything is going well, the time comes when you need to share your expertise and your experience with other people—with people who haven’t had the same luck. So why not join up with a humanitarian organization? I worked as the operating room supervising nurse in Gaza. I managed, directed, trained, evaluated, coordinated, organized, and planned everything in coordination with the surgical activities. We worked in an MSF field hospital, in tents set up in front of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, a city 20 kilometers south of Gaza City, where MSF has its office and house. Because of the events, we were only able to operate during for four days of that month-long mission, but we decided to do the maximum number of operations per day. There are posters hanging all across the Gaza Strip with information about this program inviting potential patients to consult our teams. The day before the surgeries began, the surgeons—both Palestinian and expatriate—carefully examined 200 patients. In the end, we operated on 25 people and dressed the wounds of two additional sedated patients. Read the rest of Mateja Stare’s account from the his time in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Palestinian Territories 2012 © Mateja Stare/MSF An MSF staff member tends to a young burn victim.

Performing Reconstructive Surgery in the Gaza Strip

My name is Mateja Stare. I’m 38 and I am from Slovenia. In Ljubljana, the capital, I work in the country’s largest hospital. I am an operating room nurse. I’ve just come back from the Gaza Strip, where I spent a month on mission with MSF.

To say that you want “to help people in need” can sound a little superficial, and even frivolous, but it’s also true. I really believe that after you’ve organized your life and everything is going well, the time comes when you need to share your expertise and your experience with other people—with people who haven’t had the same luck. So why not join up with a humanitarian organization?

I worked as the operating room supervising nurse in Gaza. I managed, directed, trained, evaluated, coordinated, organized, and planned everything in coordination with the surgical activities. We worked in an MSF field hospital, in tents set up in front of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, a city 20 kilometers south of Gaza City, where MSF has its office and house.

Because of the events, we were only able to operate during for four days of that month-long mission, but we decided to do the maximum number of operations per day. There are posters hanging all across the Gaza Strip with information about this program inviting potential patients to consult our teams. The day before the surgeries began, the surgeons—both Palestinian and expatriate—carefully examined 200 patients. In the end, we operated on 25 people and dressed the wounds of two additional sedated patients.

Read the rest of Mateja Stare’s account from the his time in the Gaza Strip.

Photo: Palestinian Territories 2012 © Mateja Stare/MSF An MSF staff member tends to a young burn victim.

Seeing firsthand the distance so many families have to travel in order to seek basic treatment here, I worry about what the months of the hunger gap will bring when the effects of food insecurity and lack of access to early medical treatment are intertwined.
An MSF nurse writes about the positive impact community health workers have on preventing malnutrition in Chad. Read more.
My perspective definitely changed. This program has absolutely had a positive impact in Nigeria. In 2011, we performed more surgeries than any other fistula hospital in the country, and we had many women leaving our hospital dry, or at least able to live some semblance of a normal life.
Kate Pittel
A Nurse with MSF speaking about her time in Nigeria

Read the full article from the Oakland Press here.

Before, I was also a refugee in Ethiopia. It was a long time ago and there were many of us. We spent something like 20 years there as refugees. After that, we came back to Blue Nile and now again we are here in Doro camp, because of this new fighting in Blue Nile State.

For the refugees living all around me in Doro, there is not enough water for everyone. It is my wife who collects the water. When she goes in the morning, sometimes she can wait till evening before she gets any water. Every time she comes back and she tells me about how she had to quarrel with other women about the water.

Younassa Lifa Lenya,
a refugee now employed as a nurse in the MSF field hospital in Doro

Since November, some 80,000 refugees from Sudan’s Blue Nile State have sought shelter in two camps located in a remote and barren region of South Sudan where humanitarian organizations are confronting massive logistic challenges to access and assist them. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been running a substantial emergency response, focusing on providing medical care in the camps and in mobile clinics to villages along the border with Sudan, where several thousand more refugees are gathered.
A lot of the people we saw had never seen a doctor. Ever.

Nenna Arnold, who was an outreach nurse supervisor in Dadaab, Kenya from August 2010 – May 2011.

She continued:

“Doctors Without Borders was already running a hospital and four busy health posts inside the crowded Dagahaley refugee camp when hundreds of people fleeing Somalia began to arrive. But there was no room for them in the camp. It was already extremely overcrowded, with 100,000 people living in a space created for 30,000. So the refugees began to settle on the outskirts of the camp. They had no access to food, water, and shelter and built small huts out of twigs, cloth, and cardboard.

The first thing I did was to organize a group of community health workers to find the children and pregnant women who needed medical attention. Every day our vehicle was filled with patients, including many malnourished and sick children. We’d deliver them to one of the health posts or the hospital, depending on the severity of their condition.

At times I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of this growing crisis, but I extended my stay for an extra three months because I felt there was still so much more I could do. I loved the people and our medical action was so critical.”

In the Dadaab camps of northerastern Kenya, which collectively form the largest refugee camp in the world, life is becoming more difficult every day and hundreds of thousands of refugees are facing a humanitarian emergency. Their health is at risk of deteriorating rapidly but humanitarian aid agencies are struggling to provide meaningful assistance on an ongoing basis. Learn more.

DRC: “At Night, the Stories … Come Back to Haunt Me” Baraka, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—“I [MSF nurse Alice Echumbe] am the supervisor of the Jamaa Letu center, which in Swahili means “Our family.” MSF opened this center in May 2011 to offer additional community services, especially to pregnant women who need to be close to the hospital just before birth to avoid a long travel from their villages. The center also welcomes patients who want a more private and confidential setting for their consultations in family planning, voluntary HIV/AIDS testing (especially for pregnant women), treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and treatment for survivors of sexual violence. These survivors are not only women but [also] men and even children, some of them less than five years old. I am a nurse by training and have worked for MSF since 2009, previously at MSF’s Baraka Hospital. I have done outreach work with mobile health teams, traveling to remote villages to raise awareness about health issues such as cholera, malnutrition, and TB. What our teams notice in the villages is that people often go to traditional healers when they are sick—for example if a child has malaria, one of the most common illnesses. But traditional medicine can sometimes lead to serious complications and can put patients at risk of dying, especially if they cannot get to a hospital in time. So we explain to the community and to traditional healers to recognize when it is necessary to seek help and send their patients to a health center. We also try to convince pregnant women to go to the rural health center or a hospital to give birth because those places have a skilled birth attendant, equipment, and drugs. Photo: DRC 2011 © Claudia Blume/MSF

DRC: “At Night, the Stories … Come Back to Haunt Me”

Baraka, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—“I [MSF nurse Alice Echumbe] am the supervisor of the Jamaa Letu center, which in Swahili means “Our family.” MSF opened this center in May 2011 to offer additional community services, especially to pregnant women who need to be close to the hospital just before birth to avoid a long travel from their villages.

The center also welcomes patients who want a more private and confidential setting for their consultations in family planning, voluntary HIV/AIDS testing (especially for pregnant women), treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and treatment for survivors of sexual violence. These survivors are not only women but [also] men and even children, some of them less than five years old.

I am a nurse by training and have worked for MSF since 2009, previously at MSF’s Baraka Hospital. I have done outreach work with mobile health teams, traveling to remote villages to raise awareness about health issues such as cholera, malnutrition, and TB.

What our teams notice in the villages is that people often go to traditional healers when they are sick—for example if a child has malaria, one of the most common illnesses. But traditional medicine can sometimes lead to serious complications and can put patients at risk of dying, especially if they cannot get to a hospital in time. So we explain to the community and to traditional healers to recognize when it is necessary to seek help and send their patients to a health center.

We also try to convince pregnant women to go to the rural health center or a hospital to give birth because those places have a skilled birth attendant, equipment, and drugs.

Photo: DRC 2011 © Claudia Blume/MSF

One of my patients was a young boy who had heart problems. He was not long for this world, but I spent time dancing with him. I think what we provided this boy was a sense of stability, a sense of support, and some palliative care. What I’ve had to learn with MSF is that sometimes you can dig as deep as you can and find out as much as you can, clinically speaking, only to learn that all you can do is hang out and provide a moment of fun for your patient.
MSF nurse Mary Jo Frawley writes about working in Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010.
Within an hour, my bag was packed.
MSF nurse Mary Jo Frawley writes about being sent to Haiti days after the earthquake.

Haiti: “If She Does Not Drink, She Will Die”

Interview with Michelle Mays, an MSF nurse back from Haiti, who recounts what she saw, what was accomplished & what remains to be done.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

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Hear the song created by an MSF nurse in Central African Republic to raise awareness of sleeping sickness and malaria.

This is an excerpt from the December 2009 episode of the MSF Frontline Reports podcast.  Hear the full report here or subscribe in iTunes.