Guyana Nurse Training Program: Our (non) Snow Day

As all of our friends and family back home today were posting pictures of their snow day, Kate and I awoke to a hot and humid (100% humidity) morning in Guyana. As we climbed the 3 flights of stairs up to the NICU, I couldn't help but feel a sense of being back where I belong, back to the "old routine" as if I were riding the elevator up to the 4th floor at Nationwide Children's. Kate and I were greeted with hugs by Aruna, the program coordinator for health sciences education at Georgetown Public Hospital/Guyana help the kids, and our Guyanan tour guide/mother/fixer of all problems :-) We then joined Cenise, the nurse educator at GPHC, and the 16 fabulous nurses who have dedicated the last year of their lives to learning about caring for sick neonates while sacrificing time away from their own families. Today was their final evaluation of the program, so we spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of the program and how to make it more effective for future groups. While no program is perfect, they all had great comments to share about how far they have come as a cohesive group and how much they have learned about themselves as nurses.

The nurses filling out their evaluation forms

Cenise grading final exams

The view of the downpour outside the training room on the 3rd floor of the maternity block

During our lunch break, Kate followed up with Pheona, the director of Laboratory services, from their meeting in March about how to help the lab run more efficient and smaller samples from our neonatal population. We learned that they submitted a budget plan for an iStat machine and cartridges to run basic electrolytes, BUN/Creatinine and Hemoglobin/hematocrits. This would be a tremendous help, as the lab techs could come to the unit and run these tests at the bedside, instead of the current process of having a physician draw the lab, a nurse take the sample across the street to the lab, the lab to run the test and record on paper, the nurse to go retrieve the paper from across the street, and bring the result back to the physician. We also got a tour of the lab and their current equipment by Amelia, a microbiologist who now works in quality improvement.

Kate and QI/microbiologist Amelia
Later on in the day we connected with a few more familiar faces, mostly Guyana residents Dr. Sara Singh and Dr. Winsome Scott along with Dr. Nar Singh who arrived from Canada this morning. We rounded out the day with a (few) beers at Nar's hotel where we met his brother Robin who is in town for the next 2 months helping a local business with their IT solutions (next up, GPHC??!!).

I swear Kate and I had help with all these beers :)

The night ended with a great celebration with the program nurses and educator, Cenise, at New Thriving restaurant where there were many toasts to finishing a great year!