I think that it would be appropriate to say before beginning that it has been rather overdue; for me to write some new content for this blog. I most certainly haven't lived up to my personal goals in terms of the amount of content that I intended to write beforehand. But with that elephant in the room at least slightly addressed, I think it's about time that something was said about my time in Tanzania; which, was frankly an out of this world experience!
Yes, out of this world! I do think that it can be somewhat clichéd to write about certain types of new experiences in such superlatives, yet I cannot help to say that this of my time Tanzania. It was a 'life-changing experience'. It is for this reason I want to take the time to do the entire experience some justice, both for my personal reflection and to share my experiences with other students, Radiographers and other interested parties.
I would like to begin the journey by giving a brief overview of my placement experience.
This was obviously the main reason that I was in Tanzania to undertake my Diagnostic Radiography elective placement, during this time; I worked between two hospitals: Muhimbili National Hospital and Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute. These two separate institutions are located on a single campus alongside the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. The former of these two hospitals, the National Hospital, is one of the premier teaching hospitals in the country and as the name implies, takes referrals from across the country. With its hand-written reports being made from film and trips to the darkroom a necessity; it was fair to say that this was far from my norms, yet extremely exciting. Though the hospital was fairly well equipped with: Conventional and Fluoroscopic Radiology, CT, MRI and Ultrasound. With this mixture of equipment and range of referrals: the caseloads were fairly varied and interesting. This became particularly apparent for me in fluoroscopy, where I got to see procedures that I have never seen before, for example a Matriculating Cystogram; the experience has certainly left my portfolio with some rarer examinations. I also saw some difficult things, for which I do not want to be overly critical for that seems to easy. Yet there were issues with patient care and technique, to name a few, but I think the real issues at hand were a lack of funding and perhaps harshly: a lack of knowledge. I think that was something a lot of the students within the Work the World house struggled to deal with at times, having the difficulty to see outdated and poor techniques used across the board.
The other hospital, the Orthopaedic Institute, had a different situation on its hands: the main orthopaedic, trauma and neurology centre for the whole of the Dar es Salaam region; yet currently lacking in CT and MRI. This means that patients have to be sent over to the National Hospital for their cross-sectional imaging. Which is fine, until you are dealing a fairly major trauma situation and the patient has blood gushing from their skull: as attempts are made to produce plain-film skull radiographs. Overall this lead to an eye-opening experience, where I got to see some interesting fractures though often as the go-to-person for using the CR reader.
The contact that I did get with patients in both hospitals was varied: as despite the official language status of English, a majority of people could only speak a few basic phrases. This left me using the rather basic phrases that I had learnt in Swahili beforehand and during my time in Tanzania, or quite often a range of non-verbal communication methods. This was actually really part of the experience that was worth having, it really struck home to me the importance the learning of other languages than our mother-tongue, even (especially!) for us English speakers!
Overall I have little to nothing to complain about during my time in Tanzania, and there is a lot more that needs to be said. But, I want to take my time and reflect properly on my experience, this is something where time taken to reflect seems to help. I do have plenty more content including some 'photo-essay' style posts and more reflections, both on the hospital and Work the World experience. I would also like to touch a little more on Swahili and talk about the country in general. I think that I will work on this over a longer period of time, for that will allow me to really share my experiences in a comprehensive manner.
