Day 6 – Clinic

Today I got to know the grounds of Nyakato a little bit and met most of the staff that make this place operate. This was the first day to start working on establishing a new accounting system for the center to make sure they are charging enough money to make the health clinic sustainable. After a tour of the grounds I shadowed a few of the nurses and doctors to get a feel for how things operate within the clinic. As of right now a patient goes through the following steps:

1)      Check in

2)      History/Vitals

3)      See a doctor (at this point the patient may proceed to step 8)

4)      Order lab work

5)      Pay for lab work

6)      Get lab work done

7)      See a doctor again

8)      Check out and pay

9)      Got to the pharmacy if necessary

The lead physician here is named Dr. Bonaventura who oversees the operations of the clinic. He is assisted by a lady named Miriam and together they do all of the accounting, HR, and management of the facility. Most of my morning consisted of sitting in Dr. Bon’s office to catch him whenever he got a free moment (about 3 minutes between each patient) to go over what accounting methods he had in place. I learned a lot about how the clinic operates but still have quite a few questions since Dr. Bon does not have all of the records I need to perform my analysis. Unfortunately it has gotten busy and I will not be able to complete my fact gathering today so instead I helped Dr. Bon write prescriptions and order lab tests. This was very interesting as I got an inside look on how they determine what treatment to apply to each patient. I also helped prepare and witnessed a circumcision. This was not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever experienced in my life but it is one of the more common procedures done here so it was cool that I got to see what all goes into completing such a task.

In the afternoon we took a car full of people to go to the central market to get food for the next few days. This open market was fascinating as there were fresh fruits and vegetables everywhere along the narrow market walkways. The market is very busy. There is shouting from people trading goods and trying to move them via wheelbarrow to their appropriate places. The narrow walkways are barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow and a person to get by one another but I was able to get this picture in a calmer isle. Along with the commotion of trading everyone calls out to us, “Mzungu!” which means “white person” or European. The origin of mzungu comes from a word meaning around and around because the Europeans would come to this region throughout history for a few years and then leave for a while only to come back again. So now anyone who is white is classified as an mzungu.

I am still pretty jet-lagged so I will again be falling asleep early today. That’s okay though since I always end up waking up around 4:00am and read until the rest of the crew gets up around 7:30. It’s a good time to practice my Swahili. Habari za usuki!