Guyana Nurse Training Program: Guyana Hospitality

Dr. Nar jokingly refers to the hospitality of this country as "Guyanese hostility" but today I witnessed the ultimate showing of how the Guyanese love to welcome people into their country with open bottles, open kitchens, and open arms.

I started my day with attending the 7th annual Guyana Medical Scientific Conference. Even without an official registration, people allowed me to learn from the presenters, who were mostly residents in different specialty programs at GPHC. Two of the pediatric residents, Dr. Areefa Aladdin and Dr. Winsome Scott presented their research, and the lab director, Pheona, whom Kate and I met with last week, also presented.

There was also a presentation from one of the sponsors of the conference, JIPA Network, who are a group of physicians that deliver tele health/self-pay service who coordinate with many latin american and caribbean countries to give health care. Most of their talk about about mobilizing healthcare and education to low to middle income countries using consultants throughout the U.S. and South America (mainly Columbia). It was an interesting concept to me, and got my wheels turning about how I can turn my crazy obsession with delivering nursing education to a global audience into a real solution. Yes, I can hear all the voices of my past saying, "Don't get involved with yet another project" and "be happy where you are" and "just enjoy what you do, don't go looking for other things to get involved in". Hopefully most of you are helping me to tell those voices to shut up. I know I should just enjoy having my NICU job and the Guyana Help the Kids position. But I can' t help wanting to be an entrepreneur in the field of nursing education. I can't help but want to figure out a way to help nursing faculty teach their nurses to the best of their ability so they can help change healthcare in their countries. I can't help wanting to keep traveling, keep learning, keep experiencing everything my profession has to offer. So, stay tuned for my crazy dreams of making a Khan Acadmemy/Coursera/JIPA-like virtual training program for nursing.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of takeaway observations from the conference:

1. Physicians may have the data about a problem/solution, but nurses really bring the heart and reason to help solve a problem to light (One BScN nurse spoke from the heart about comforting a patient dealing with prostate cancer at the age of 45, which led to her wanting to explore attitudes and knowledge comprehension surrounding prevention, screening, and treatment of prostate cancer)

2. The medical community is always the first to blame nurses when there is a problem (One physician talked about his research with MRSA in patients on a burn unit. Their first line was to test and "decontaminate" all of the nurses positive with MRSA- note- a good majority of even community people are positive for this bacteria which is completely harmless to someone not immunocompromised. They provided treatment to nurses and made them wear full protection gear when touching patients, yet never tested/treated physicians and never did a follow up to see if this intervention actually decreased their infection rates. They just assumed nurses were the problem, and if they "fixed" it, the problem was solved)

3. Even physicians in low-income countries laugh/roll their eyes when talking about complementary/alternative medicine. There was a video about "bush medicine" or alternative medicine practiced by people in outlying regions of the country, which mostly included use of herbs. The video ran through the most common herbs being used in the country along with side effects and drug interactions. At the end of the video, it posed the question, "would you prescribe bush medicine for your patients?" The physicians sitting in back of me starting laughing and answered with a "hell no!". I found it interesting that while herbs have their side effects, physicians could be so short sided. Even if you don't believe it using them, you have to understand that your patients may, and asking about additional drugs/herbs should be routine in all health questionnaires. They completely missed the point.

The conference center (which has routinely showed up in the background of many of my pictures from project dawn. Notice that I am one of the first persons in the auditorium- The program was supposed to start 2 minutes after I snapped this picture. Guyanese time is very loose- I think we started about 20 minutes after the program said it would, which isn't too bad, considering many things start 30min-1hour later than advertised)

The lab director, Pheona, presenting her research on the testing for sickle cell traits

The conference program and schedule of events

Mina and I ditched the conference at lunchtime to attend a wedding of her future son-in-law's (Rish) cousin. We first went to lunch at Rish's grandparents house where we also met his mother, cousins, uncles, and his father Robin who Kate and I met earlier in the week (Nar's brother). They all welcomed me in with open arms to share in their lunchtime feast of Indo-Guyanese dishes like mutton curry, baked chicken, potato salad, and rice with dahl. We marveled at their beautiful garden (Rish's grandmother brings back plants from the US and Canada when she visits...) and their traditional outdoor cookstove which is made out of clay and seen in Indian cooking.

Clay/mud stove used to cook traditional Indian dishes

Grandma's Orchids

View from the entry way to Rish's grandparent's home

After lunch we went to the "yard wedding" held at the bride's home. Apparently the actual ceremony was held earlier in the day, in which the groom traveled from his home across the river to attend, then afterwards he takes his new wife back to his house for a celebration while the bride's family celebrates separately- this celebration is meant to be more strict as there is no meat served, and no alcohol is allowed in the house. Tomorrow the groom and bride will return to her house for another celebration with all of these things. When we turned onto the block, I could hear the party before I could see it as the Hindi music was rockin. Again we were welcomed in with open arms, and I don't believe I had stepped 2 feet out of the car before I was handed my first beer and introduced to every cousin there. Mina and her daughter explained the rituals and took me into the house to teach me how to dance as well as taste (with only my fingers) all the delicacies, all of which was cooked by 2 of the elder men. Rice, Dahl, roti, potato curry, 7-vegetable curry, pumpkin curry, spinach and eggplant were piled onto my leaf (it was a lilly-pad looking leaf which is commonly used in these celebrations), and it was all delicious! The drinks kept flowing (I never had a beer out of my hand more than 5 seconds before another was placed there) and the introductions, dance lessons, and sharing of culture kept on through dusk. It was a great experience, one that made me feel like I really had a Guyanese family.