(by Dr Sara Hunt and Dr Sue Catling)
Phebe Hospital houses the original Anaesthetic Nursing teaching programme for Liberia, however there is now only one medically qualified anaesthetist in the whole country. A teaching programme has just started but currently all the anaesthesia is delivered by the nurse practitioners who are unsupervised by medical anaesthetists. The aim of training is that they will perform at the standard of trained medical anaesthetists….so our teaching was to be of the standard delivered to
We taught daily in the recovery area of the operating theatres, (pic 1 : teaching in the recovery area of Theatres – power but no windows!!) which had power from the generator most of the time, and in the school of nursing (pic 2 : “teaching in the nursing school – windows but no power!”) – which didn’t, but which had large classrooms with a big veranda outside. We usually worked from 8.30 till 5 with a break for lunch, and we used every method we could think of – PowerPoint when there was electricity, chalk and board, quizzes in teams, real-life “simulation “ with mannequins, acting out patient problems, - we even had 2 of us pretending to be molecules in order to demonstrate a basic point in physics!!!! (yes, that was worth seeing – Oscars for Sara and Dave’s performance of Boyles law!!)
Pic 1 Pic 2
The plan was to stay on site on the hospital compound. When we arrived on day 1 (after 20 hours of travelling) we discovered the house we’d been assigned had only two beds (there are three of us) no fridge, no water and ..worst of all … no mosquito nets. Not great in a malaria ridden area! And even more worrying to hear an experienced nurse say he didn’t “believe” in mosquito nets .....what???
As team leader my sense of humour began to fail at this point but we managed to negotiate a move into the house I stayed in on the 2009 trip.-Massive relief.
There was a hospital canteen -The Flagpole Cafe - that produced food for the students ; mainly rice with river fish – which to our western palates were very bony- and “river greens” which tasted a bit like spinach. The overall effect was like a fish and spinach curry but without the curry. (We later discovered that they were in fact being kind by not adding the local chillies to the food for us ..........!!) It also was our source of bottled water, for which we were very grateful. The food was perfectly adequate and nutritious, and came in giant portions - but after just a few days we were dreaming of pizza chips and ice cream !!!! (pic 3 : ” the girls at the flagpole canteen”)
pic 3
The house we eventually moved into had a resident cook – John, organised by the doctor who was already there, and for a few dollars a day, he cooked lunch for us every day. It was the same basic food as on offer at The Flagpole, (with chillies on the side as an option ) - but he also found us bananas, papaya and pineapple. John was a godsend, and was very happy to increase his output to feed all of us – he made a big difference to our well-being and comfort in Phebe. Thank you John. (pic 4 : John the cook ).