Feeling the Burden of a Broken System

With my first real day on the floor of Kenyatta Hospital I began to feel the culture shock. First off I have never been in a hospital with over 2,000 patient beds, and you know the sad part, 2,000 beds is not enough. Nicole and I were placed on the pediatric unit, which was really exciting, except I was not prepared for what I was going to walk into. To give a little perspective, Seattle Children's has about 345 patent beds, and those are hardly all in use at one time. In Kenyatta, they ideally would have 6 beds per room, which would make 20 patients per unit (80 patients for the whole floor). Well, due to the public hospital standards and not enough affordable hospitals, the unit I worked on had around 59 children (thats about 240 children for the whole floor....almost a full hospital for a single floor!!). Kenyatta Hospital can also not afford to have a lot of nurses, so on this floor one nurse can have up to 40 patients! Talk about overwhelming. Another overwhelming thought is medical bills. In the States our insurance and/or us gets the bill after our stay. At Kenyatta Hospital, patients must pay a deposit to become an inpatient. and in order to leave the hospital they must finish paying their hospital stay bill. The hospital can keep the child for months until the bill is paid! But this story gets more interesting. When a child passes away the family has 2 months to pay off the hospital and morgue bill, if they are not able to follow through the government will have the child buried in a mass grave cemetery.

My heart just really began to ache for these families and these nurses. Even though I am not a parent the thought of having to wait to leave the hospital sounds terrible, and then not being able to have a burial for your deceased child...its devastating. The nurses are so equipped with skills far beyond what I have seen in the states, and they really want to have the best practice possible, but they have to make do with what they have. These nurses have to sacrifice to much so that every child can just receive medication on time. Now, you might be wondering, where is this culture shock you talk about? Well for the first time in my life I actually felt out of place. The nurses that I followed my first part of the shift did not speak much English when with patients, so I had no idea what was going on. Then when we would go to a new patent I would not get filled in on what just happened. I felt out of place, totally unprepared, and incompetent. The nurses would ask me questions about what I would do in the States, and I did not feel like I could answer their questions confidently.

That feeling did not pass until after my lunch break. And after that I really got to see how special and amazing each of these kids are. Children no matter how sick sometimes, just want to play and be normal. They loved to play with our stethoscopes and our hand sanitizer. One of the little boys kept touching my hair saying how soft it was.

Some other things that really stood out today was how truly blessed we are to have the hospitals we have. I did not realize how much we take for granted. To have a single patient room and your own bed is a blessing. To have your own tubing that has never been used is a blessing, and to have a nurse that can be a full care taker is a blessing. Even though this Kenyan hospital was not up to American standards they are able to make do with the best that they have. I am looking forward to a day where I can be a change for a broken system like this!