Maaz broke the printer – Vrushti lost her sanity – Nat gave up – Simone got locked — Gaby got cookies   — Jules became a mother

The day commenced with the AISHA team splitting up for the first time and, needless to say, it was not a fun experience. Juliana, Gabriela, and Simone were the first group who ventured with Mabinty to Matene village at her outreach day. On the other hand, Maaz, Natalie, and Vrushti were the second group who were supposed to go to the Makeni Regional Hospital again to meet with three different clinics, advertising AISHA and its database. 

The first group had an enlightening, wonderful experience in which they accompanied Nurse Mabinty and observed her interactions with the village. We arrived at the village to a crowd of children and mothers attentively listening to the chief share insightful information and advice. After everyone gathered at the front near the nurses, Mabinty taught them one of many lessons, this one being about antenatal care and breastfeeding. After this, Mabinty started giving out the vaccines and supplements to the babies. After talking with Mabinty and her fellow nurses, it was clear that the human connection was extremely important during these mobile health clinic days. Mabinty spent about 20 minutes talking to a rowdy audience of eager listeners about the care she will be giving and about breastfeeding and family planning. Throughout this first week, and especially this morning, it has been clear that there is a significant gap in healthcare knowledge in the public. It was our instinct to find a way to use AISHA to fill this gap, however after some long discussions it became clear that technology is not the solution, and our efforts would be more impactful if we hone in on our original plan to increase education for healthcare workers rather than patients.

Juliana, Simone and Gaby with Mabinty at the mobile outreach clinic.

The second group did not manage to achieve the same level of success with their day. Prior to the meeting at Makeni Regional, the group stopped by the office to prepare for their encounters with Nurse Lilian of the IPF, Nurse Zainab at the ANC, and Nurse Margaret in the Pediatrics Ward. The preparation was supposed to consist of printing relevant portions of our database to distribute the information to the respective clinics. This plan had the goal of having the nurses review our collection so that they could inspect, analyze, and augment or deduct anything that they deemed suitable. But, a significant problem occured when we realized that our database was not adequate enough. Upon our review, we noticed that the database we were utilizing, the one that last year’s team had compiled, was in accordance with U.S standards, not Sierra Leone’s. For example, there were details of ultrasound present which were not applicable in this country as the technology is not available. 

Stressfully, we quickly highlighted the relevant data that we needed at the moment, fixing and verifying whatever we thought to be inapplicable. Trying not to be late for our appointments, we executed our tasks as quickly as we could, and as soon as we were done, Maaz proceeded to print the required documents. Unfortunately, the printer jammed up and our anxiety kicked up by a mile. Attempting to calm down our nerves, AISHA tried their best to resolve the issue seeking the help of WHI’s employees and, luckily, we were on our way!

Maaz struggling with the printer.

Reaching Makeni Regional, however, we had to wait a couple of hours to meet with the mentioned nurses. Time passed by our discussion of the current political state of the world (we are intellectuals), and by the end of our visit, we had managed to meet with Nurse Margaret, and drop off our database with Nurse Zainab. Nurse Margaret indicated that she had liked the device in the past year and she hoped to use it this year as well but in a more private setting with only her staff present, not the clients. This opened an interesting doorway that we planned to explore.

Maaz, Natalie and Vrushti at Makeni Regional Hospital.

After the team came back together, we had a long long conversation about the direction and aim of our project. As one can say it, we were soul searching, and pondering what the future of AISHA looks like. After all the conversations we had with different nurses in different specialties, we gained insights into how different nurses wanted to utilize our device. For example, one of the nurses said that her patients ask her a lot of questions and having this device will add weight to the answers she gives them. She planned on using this device along with the patients and interpret the answers for them. On the other hand, another nurse said that her patients do not ask her a lot of questions and are especially embarrassed or shy about asking questions on topics such as STIs. She envisioned the devices being useful in allowing her patients to privately ask questions. Given these major differences, the team first decided to customize the database to meet each department’s specific needs. However, after further pondering on it, the team began questioning the feasibility of customizing databases for each department. While it is possible to include different information in the database for each clinic to improve user-friendliness, having different audiences, different use cases, and different databases for every single nurse we work with would be stretching our project too thin and minimizing impact. We came to the conclusion that even though the nurses suggested things for our product, it may just be because we were unclear in our introduction; it is important that we take everything we hear with a grain of salt. The goal of our project is and always has been to improve healthcare literacy for healthcare workers. This past week the subject has shifted from PHU nurses to hospital nurses, to patients, to all three, and while we were excited at the potential span of our impact, the more visits we went on and the more we observed cultural context, we realized that it would be most impactful to choose one audience and hone in on them: Hospital nurses. While PHU nurses are the most in need of information, the spotty internet connection would make our devices ineffective and frustrating to use. This means our plans for the upcoming days are: to alter our database to make it more accurate and relevant to our audience, and to make more connections with people and departments that would maximize our impact for nurses in hospitals. 

AISHA’s soul searching time.

We ended off the day to a trip to the market, to pick our own fabrics and to get it tailored so we would get out own custom clothes! What a great way to end the day. 

Picture of the market.

Highlights

• Vrushti → Visiting the market and picking out the fabric
• Juliana -> Being with the big group of kids outside the tailor 
• Natalie → Vrushti’s chips! 
• Simone → seeing the community come together at Mabinty’s clinic 
• Gaby → soul searching
• Maaz —> analyzing the political state of the world

Rating: 1/5