It’s been a while since I’ve attempted to do something with
absolutely no preconceived notion as to how it’s going to unfold. First days of class, work, hospital
rotations; meeting advisors, significant other’s parents, new roommates—there
are all these firsts that we partake
in during our lives. But the night before they take place, when the anticipation is fumbling our attempt to fall asleep, we’re picturing something in our minds. There’s a scene we can kind of imagine; I do
not know if this is making sense.
Our first focus group, which we conducted a few days ago,
came with no such images. Or if it did, now that I’m status-post, I have no
memory of what they were. It’s like trying to picture how you used to picture
Harry Ron and Hermione prior to seeing the movies. I’m sure my visual imagination had been at
work, reading Years 1 through 8, but
now Daniel, whatever his name is, and Emma are all I can see. I still don’t know if I’m making sense.
Let me try to make this make sense.
Emily and I traveled across the world to visit the villages of Northern Malawi.
Our goal is to understand the barriers to access and utilization of the
hospitals, including issues with transportation and sociocultural barriers. I
think in our introductory meeting last week, our interpreter Elina paraphrased
our aims well. In her words our goals are to understand:
1- Problems which make Malawians not access hospitals.
2- Types of diseases Malawians go to the hospital with
versus opting for traditional healers.
3- If provided with a bicycle ambulance will they access the
hospital more than now.
To accomplish these aims, we are visiting 10 villages at
varying distances from the local hospitals. In the villages, we will conduct
focus groups with 4-8 village members. One focus group down, and we already
have some interesting information (data?) to spill over. I have a lot more to
say about the women we met and the stories they shared, but I think I’ll come
back to that at another time.
So you see: It’s not really all fun and games under the
sub-Saharan sun. Speaking of, have I mentioned the gorgeous weather? It’s funny
I haven’t because I often like to say that if I weren’t going to be a doctor
I’d be a meteorologist. Note that I like
to say this, I’m not 100 percent certain it’s true. I was much more impressed
with meteorologists when they had blue screens and not touch screens as their
weather maps. How did they know where to point?
With enough sense to end this post now,
Rebecca
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