|
|
|
|
Jan. 15 Oct. 24 Sept. 24 Sept. 2 [][][][][][][][] Click images to see larger image.
[][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][] Photographs by Peggy
Jarrett [][][][][][][][] |
It is now the beginning of January and it has been three months since we began the second village doctor's training. The students, who are between 19 and 39 years old, have completed half of their training. I feel this program is much better suited towards the village doctors than the first training. We have spent a lot of time making changes to the curriculum. This curriculum focuses more on identification and treatment of common local illnesses. We also emphasized the importance of referrals in the cases which they were unable to manage. And we added an introduction to preventive health, methods of record keeping and basic information on STDs and AIDS. As in the first training, the students will spend three months in the classroom and three months doing a clinical practice. The clinical practice is divided into two parts. The students will spend one full day and four afternoons in their clinical placements. In addition, they will spend four mornings in class with a Doctors Without Borders instructor. We felt this was necessary to give the students more supervision and guidance. The DWB instructor will focus on practicing diagnostic skills through the use of case studies and group discussions. She will also provide additional classroom instruction on topics which we felt needed to be stressed. We have also increased local involvement. In the last training, the students were spread out over eight counties for their clinical placements. The local officials were not very involved for most of this training, and I was only able to visit each clinical site once. For this training, we decided to keep all of the students in one city, the county's capital city. The students will rotate between four clinical placement sites within this city. The person who is our liaison with the local public health bureau is very interested in this project and has said she will be visiting the students frequently. The housing for the students is being donated by the local public health bureau and a classroom will be provided at a local medical station. There was one final addition to this project of which I am very proud. We added a training for the teachers at the health school. Since we added AIDS to the curriculum, I felt it was necessary that the teachers have up to date and accurate information. This two-day workshop was held December 27 and 28, and 20 teachers from the school participated. It was amazing to see the change in attitudes from the beginning of the first day to the end of the second day. Many people began the weekend wanting to isolate all HIV-positive individuals and blaming anyone with AIDS for some character flaw. However, they ended up understanding the scope of the epidemic, the value of harm reduction and the need to stop discrimination. I was very impressed. These teachers are forming the health workers of the future for this area and I feel this training has helped all the students at the health school, not only the village doctors. Soon the students will be taking a month break to celebrate the lunar new year otherwise known as Chinese New Year. They call this celebration Spring Festival and it is traditionally a time to be with family. Businesses close down and in some areas of China there are large celebrations. Last year in Kunming, however, it seemed as if everyone either stayed in their homes for four or five days or left town. The town was deserted! Having just arrived a week or so before last year's celebration, I was still relying on restaurants for survival and I had a hard time finding any place open. But this year I will be leaving the country for vacation along with everyone else. Friends will be coming from Colorado to take a trip with me to Vietnam. Then, I will return and start the program's clinicals. |
