First Day at Chidamoyo Hospital

We arrived last night, and received a warm welcome from Kathy, our host and the nurse practitioner at the Chidamoyo Christian Hospital. She featured us on her blog! Click the link for more photos and learn more about her work in Zim.

Today was our first day working at the Hospital, which means it is time for our first blog post! These next two weeks, we will be volunteering in the outpatient rehabilitation clinic and inpatient units of the hospital, as well as doing community visits, and providing educational presentations. Brighton is Chidamoyo's therapist and provides speech, physical, and occupational therapy to the patients, so we will be working closely with him all week. The outpatient clinic serves patients of all ages, with varied needs, and who come from many different locations to be seen. There are no specific appointment times for patients, which means the patients could wait hours to be seen. It also means that at times we could have five patients waiting at once. Also of note is that if a patient cannot afford their care, they can negotiate and pay for services with what they do have, such as grain or eggs.

In the hospital there is also a house designated for expecting mothers where mothers can stay (sometimes for weeks) while they wait to give birth. We are already planning our first presentation- it will be to educate these mothers, and other healthcare workers in the nearby villages, about motor milestones and how to know if and when they should bring their child back in to be seen at the hospital. We think this is important since Brighton tells us it is common for children to not get diagnosed and treated for developmental disorders like Cerebral  Palsy until 1-2 years old. 

Today we spent the morning getting oriented to the hospital, treating one orthopedic shoulder injury, and showing Brighton the materials we brought him. These included toys for therapy use, orthotics, exercise sheets, and schematic drawings he can use to build different therapeutic equipment. Then in the afternoon we were busy removing 3 casts and a splint. It was a new experience to use the cast saw for us! It looks and sounds dangerous but it cuts the cast with vibrations that would be difficult to cut skin. Try convincing a 6 year old of that though! (Hint: toys work well as bribes). Next, we learned how to make plaster casts and we applied one for a medial malleollus fracture and another for a distal radius. 

Our daily walk up to the hospital. 

Removing a cast- my first time with a cast drill! It was nerve wracking for me, and the lady too I imagine :)

This little boy earned a small toy as a reward for being so brave!

Lastly, to add to a very full day already, we learned several words in Shona! 

Yes-ehe

No-aiwa

Thank you-tatenda

Pain-kirwadzu

Also, please excuse our typos- this is all created on an iPhone 5.