Start First Aid Project

Tuesday the 10th of February we, Marleen and Floortje, arrived in Cape Town. We are here to continue the first aid project at Sinenjongo High School in Milnerton. Last year Diede en Nienke started this project and we will continue this project by making an advanced program.
We Marleen and Floortje are fourth year nursing students from the Netherlands. We are studying at Avans University of Applied Sciences.
We are 21 and 23 years old and this is our last internship before we will finish our study.

Our first week in Cape Town was really impressive. We went four times to Sinenjongo High School to introduce ourselves and to get to know the teachers and students from this school. We have joined some Life Science lessons to experience the way of teaching at this school.
It was really nice to see the motivated students. They were really excited to meet us and vice versa. It was funny to see how they reacted on our white legs. We felt a little bit uncomfortable, but it made us laughing.

During the breaks we have talked to some students to get to know them a little bit. They were really enthusiastic to talk about their ambition and what they will become later. We have heard lots of things like becoming a pilot, engineer, docter, etcetera.

Last week was great as well. We went to the Sinenjongo High School to join some lessons again and we spoke to a lot of students. It’s great to see how motivated and enthusiastic they are. We also heard some really impressive stories about their life’s. Some of them were pregnant and married at really jong ages. Something we almost don’t know from the Netherlands. We were prepared to have something like a culture shock, but when you see the conditions of life in the townships you can’t be prepared for such a difference. Now we realize what a good life we have in the Netherlands.

Next week we will start to interview the students about the First Aid Project. We will talk about their expectations and wishes. We also get introduced to the whole school of 900 students, so we are looking forward to start.

Start blended learning project

Hey hey,

We are Antoine, Danielle and Simone and we arrived in South-Africa last week. We are all in the last year of nursing school at Avans University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. The start of our project was on monday 16th of February so we had a week to adjust to the beautiful weather of Cape Town and getting to know our surroundings. Our project will be focussing on the implementation of e-learning for nurses mainly in the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town. We will also be implementing e-learning at the N1City hospital in Cape Town. This is a project that’s been going on for over 2 years at the Groote Schuur hospital which started small with a couple of nurses on nursing wards but has been expending ever since! The digital environment provides different interactive modules like Basic Life Support(BLS), IV-therapy, computer literacy etc. It’s a fun way to learn for nurses and to improve the quality of care in the hospital(s). Though we are able to develop modules ourselves we will be focussing on implementing the e-learning and the outroll of the modules on different wards so we can reach a larger group of nurses.

We all feel that working on this project is a privilage. it’s an exciting, challenging and unique project in South-Africa. Cape Town has many to offer when you are free so it also feels a bit like a holiday in the weekends! One of our first experiences here was the church meeting in one of the Townships around Cape Town which we could attend because of our cleaning lady at home. People were dancing and singing and we all joined the party and one of us even had to come up and dance in front off the crowd. Ít’s a great impression of a cultural aspect of the country and an experience to remember!

The upcoming week we are still introducing ourselves to the hospitals and gradually make our project plan for the following months. It’s not really clear which wards and modules we are going to pursue in both hospitals but we are continually discussing this with our supervisors. The next week we will have a plan ready in which we lay out the activities and  strategy on how we’re going to combine implementing in both hospitals. We’ll keep you updated and if you have any questions please let us know.

  

Start of the HWFA Project

We are Sanne, Yvonne and Lars, three Physiotherapy students at Avans University of Applied Sciences in Breda, the Netherlands. We came to South Africa to take part in a project, organized by the University of Cape Town (UCT), to develop and implement an e-learning module for The Higher Certificate in Disability Practice. We’ve had a great first week in Cape Town. We already met a lot of nice people and because of that it felt like home pretty quick.

The Higher Certificate has been set up in collaboration with the Western Cape Department of Health and Rehabilitation Services to equip community health workers with the necessary skills and knowledge in working with children and adults with disabilities in their local communities. The course also provides prospective students with a pathway in which to study further in disability studies.

The Higher Certificate consists of 5 modules of which Health Wellness and Function Abilities (HWFA) is one of the largest. The community workers receive training from the different lecturers at the UCT. The program had 30 participants in the first year and from April 2015 they would like to start with a new group.

Our assignment is to evaluate the program according to the feedback from the community rehabilitation care workers (RCWs). With their feedback and information, UCT asked us to put the HWFA module into the e-learning system PulseWeb. The previous group of physiotherapy students also worked with PulseWeb and it is currently used in different hospitals around the country.

As soon as the HWFA module is finished, we can start with a refresher course and implement the module on the 30 participants. The module consists of theory and skills. We have to practice and ‘assess’ these skills with the participants.

During the first four weeks of the project we have to ‘shadow’ the RCWs for a few days to see who they are, what they do, what is there level, type of patients, different kind of treatments, computer facilities and more. The RCW’s work in health facilities (Life Care, Western Cape Rehabilitation Centre, Paediatric Centres), a few of them are located in the townships.

Today, Monday 16th, we had our first appointment with Anthea Brinkman and Sumaya Gabriels, the contact persons for the project. It was a nice conversation and a lot more became clear about the project and what they expect from us. We were all excited about the project and we think we can learn a lot from each other.