Physical Assessment Master Course

Ok so yesterday in one 8 hour day I had to teach the basics of how to do a comprehensive head-to-toe physical examination to 30 midwifery students. These students are all Professional Qualified Nurses already who are doing an additional one-year of training as a midwife. The dean of the school here asked me to conduct a special master assessment course specifically for these students since they will for the most part at times be alone out in the community attending to deliveries. She was concerned that many of them lack the general assessment skills they need to function independently.

So my challenge was to take a semesters worth of work that I teach at the University of Rochester and condense it down to a 8-hour super course and relate it all to the issue of HIV/AIDS which is the primary reason I am here in Swaziland. Yeah no small task but I was able to do it and the students responded really well. We had a rocky start in the morning as my teaching style is something they are simply not use to. They are use to just sitting quietly and being lectured to or at and that is not the way to teach comprehensive physical assessment. They also do not speak up, they tend to talk very softly and you have to lean in to hear them. Oh and one other thing they do in class is answer their cell phones and text on them as well. So the first thing I did that shocked them was that I requested that they turn their cell phones off and that they do not text at all as I need their full attention. I demonstrated by turning mines off and placing it in front of me on the table. I also made them each introduce themselves to me after I did so and tell me why they wanted to study midwifery. In doing so they had to talk up loud enough for the entire class to hear. Lastly I informed them that they would need to talk to me as I will being posing a lot of questions and that we will not only talk about Physical assessment but we will practicing it throughout the day. After all it is skill so application is important.

I was able to give them the broad overstrokes and did a head to toe demonstration for them in the lab as well. The entire last hour of the day was also spent in their lab practicing. I will tell you that by the end of the day I was exhausted, my voice was gone, my feet hurt, my back hurt, and I had a headache but boy what an awesome challenge to have tackled. They warmed up as the day went on, asked really good questions and began to pick up the skills. I made them all promise to continue to practice and the dean informed me that the instructors here will be following up with them to make sure as well. So another mission accomplished here.

The pic are of me and the students in their learning lab.