The Students

I spent most of my day today on the male surgical ward of the hospital working with the second year nursing students one of the staff nurses who is acting as their "preceptor". The students are doing their "clinical block" and the since there is such a severe shortage of nursing faculty (worse than our faculty shortage at home)they have to rely on the staff nurses to teach and watch the students while they are on the wards. These staff nurses are already overworked and they get no incentive to work with these students. Pet Kunaka the preceptor (women in red in the above picture)is originally from Zimbabwe and she is an excellent preceptor who really challenges the students. I was very impressed with her today. She was trained however very differently than the nurses here in Swazi and she is frustrated with what they students are not learning, but she is doing her very best to teach the students that come to her unit.

The students (there were 19 in this group all together)are young, and want to learn but they are also not properly supervised in the clincal setting. I worked with the students today teaching them how to do a complete cardiac and respiratory system assessment. They all need to study their anatomy and physiology a lot more and practice their assessment skills. For second year students their skill set is at a very low level, but this is part of the reason why I am here with Nurses SOAR. I will be making my rounds to all of the units by the time I leave and will interact with all of the 80+ students in the second year, 30 midwifery students, 13 faculty members, and 17 preceptors. I will be reviewing and teaching physical assessment skill to them all.

My up coming weekend: Tomorrow is Friday and I and my colleagues have have been invited to attend the "Capping and Striping" Ceremoney for the first year students in the morning. In this ceremoney the first year students who have now been in school here for six months will take the Florence Nightengale nursing pledge, the women will recieve their white caps with one strip and the men will get on strip on their uniforms as well. They are all excited about this ceremoney and have been preparing for it all week. I am told it will take about 4 hours and will include a singing and dancing as well. After the ceremoney I am headed back to South Africa with Dr. Mallison (The Nurese SOAR Pricipal Investigator)to go on a Safari all day on Saturday. I plan on taking a lot of pictures and will post again when I get back on sunday some time.