Safe Course Orientation

It is good to be back in Rwanda.   Each of my visits here has been so different.  The first was to survey the district hospitals, then I was in Gitwe on a short term service trip, last march I worked as a CASIEF volunteer to help teach the Rwandan Anesthesia residents, and then this trip to help coordinate the first SAFE Obstetric Anesthesia Course in Rwanda.  Each trip has been an amazing experience and has brought its own set of challenges and successes.    It is amazing the progress that has been made, but there is still so much left to be done.

We have literally been spending endless hours over the last year organizing the course.  It is exciting to see that it is actually happening.  Even though we are now in Rwanda, there is still much to be done in preparation.  Patty has nicely highlighted all that has been going on since we arrived. 

The last few days have been quite a whirlwind as we have been busy orientating the Rwandan Anesthesia faculty to the specifics of the course.  The course has approximately16 faculty but only 4 are from outside of Rwanda. The SAFE course is different from many other refresher courses offered in Rwanda as it has very little didactics and really focuses on small group workshops over a 4-day period.  We are are excited about the active teaching but at the same time it is much more challenging to coordinate and actually implement.

Patty and I agreed it would be much better to have small groups sessions. Trying to coordinate all of the faculty from the various schools and hospitals would be almost impossible.  We are conducting 2 trainings a day.  One at each of the hospitals where the various faculty work. We are definitely getting better at it but it can be quite difficult. All of the faculty speak English, but my accent and the fact I speak quickly doesn’t help.  The common theme among all of the faculty is they are very excited about participating in the course and the prospects for improving anesthesia care and safety in Rwanda.

Just to highlight all of the  training this week:

Tuesday we went to Kanombe Military Hospital and then to King Faisal

Wednesday we spent at KHI and then CHUK and Friday we will head to Butare to orientate the faculty at CHUB.  

In addition to our training sessions, we are working on a plan to distribute all of the lifeboxes donated by CAS to the district hospitals. As you can imagine, we have been quite busy.

Last night we celebrated Patty's birthday with many of our Rwandan friends at a wonderful Indian restaurant.  Emmy brought a birthday cake and the restaurant turned down the lights and everyone sang happy birthday Rwandan style.  It was a wonderful evening with old friends.

A special thanks to the AAGBI and the WFSA  for donating Anesthesia Handbooks to the all of the Anesthesia Tech students at KHI