Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Why we came

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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