This morning we had plans to visit Holy Spirit Hospital with the Mothers of Sierra Leone team. Their P.I. has been very gracious in sharing his contacts with us and serving as our point of introduction. As his team set up their equipment, he led us to the matron’s office, where we, unfortunately, learned that the matron had not shown up yet. Fortunately, the deputy matron was present and agreed to sit down with us for an interview. We spoke to her for around 15 minutes and she gave us some very valuable information about the way hospital staff are educated. A common theme we are sensing is that hospitals, especially private ones, usually have methods in place to educate personnel on topics that need to be addressed. For example, if a lack of awareness or understanding of a certain topic is found, or if new protocols for a disease are rolled out, these hospitals will typically have seminars or workshops that fill in these gaps. This is extremely similar to what we want to do for sickle cell disease knowledge gaps. We offered to come in sometime next week and give one of these seminars at Holy Spirit and were accepted with open arms.
Shortly after this, the deputy matron led us to the hospital manager and we spoke to him for some time. This was our first meeting with a member of hospital management rather than an actual healthcare worker, and it went quite well. We learned a lot about how the hospital was run and even gained some valuable insights on the best way to disseminate our videos when the time for that comes. Apparently, social media apps like WhatsApp and TikTok are much more accessible than websites like Facebook and Udemy, where we had originally planned on posting the videos. Displaying them there may broaden their outreach.
In the wee hours of the previous night, the team received a message from Khanjan about some of our educational materials. He had been exchanging messages with the medical superintendent of Makeni Government Hospital about our venture and wanted to show some of our slides or videos to him in order to keep the conversation going. After some mild grumbling about how work in Sierra Leone never seems to end, we decided to meet up and discuss what would be best to send over. The videos we created are still far from complete, and we have many changes we anticipate making in the upcoming weeks. Because of this, we decided it would be best to send over the workshop slides that we had created earlier in the summer. These slides are still a work in progress and we plan on getting feedback from educators but they showcase the venture in a very knowledgeable light. We ironed out the remaining details further with Khanjan the next afternoon at the World Hope office and sent the information along to him.
That afternoon we worked on transcribing the interview audios we obtained earlier that day with the deputy matron and hospital manager. We did this in order to keep any information obtained anonymous so that it can be used for research purposes. We are looking to identify what is currently being taught and not being taught in various curriculums of healthcare workers and managers. With this information, we can work with various schools, hospitals, and government officials to implement material that fills in any gaps that are not currently being addressed.
After being in Sierra Leone for a few days and talking with many healthcare and hospital workers, we decided that we would need to refine our workshop slides continuously as we gain more and more knowledge. We met with Joseph Sesay again and discussed our concerns and ideas regarding the workshop slides. He helped us order our slides in a very intuitive and easy-to-understand format. He also remarked that he learned quite a bit just from sitting down with us and flipping through the slides casually, so we’re excited to show them to the chancellor at U Mak tomorrow, as well as some of the important figures we will be seeing next week.
The team also went on a short outing to a convenience store across the street from the World Hope Office for some snacks. Hamsa bought some chips and an energy drink while Jake and Chibugo tried Fanta in Sierra Leone.
Then, before dinner, all of the Creative Inquiry team visited the tailor across the street from Dinner. The tailor and his family were so kind and welcoming, and the fabrics were beautiful. More pictures to come of the final products!
