Further quirks and vagaries of patient education

  The m/v Africa Mercy has day volunteers who staff our units as translators, help clean the wards and when time allows, patient education on varoius topics such as handwashing, teeth brushing, malaria prevention, breaking the cycle of food contamination, etc. They have applied for the position through their local churches and come with recommendations from their pastors and are generally a blessing and a a bit of a stress to work with for reasons of various cultural differences.

   So I came across a day volunteer who had taken the good initiative to grab the patient teaching folders that hang on the walls of the ward, and he was teaching on diarrhea. Good for him, showing this self-motivation. This was a  ward of about 10 post-operative (male) hernia patients who seemed to be attentively listening and commenting at appropriate intervals; the teaching was in Krio, so there I had a bit of an idea as to what was going on, but not much.

   I went about my business to return to 10 glazed-over expressions and patients in various states of unconsciousness - so I peeked at the day worker's papers to see what topic he had decided to cover next: breastfeeding! Somehow he thought it necessary to teach 10 men about how to breast feed and when to introduce food to "your tiny new baby"?!?!?!  Going through the motions of breastfeeding and all :-)

   What a laugh :-)