Days in Rwanda: Resuscitation training

Matt teaching airway management

We had a great time this week on Wednesday (12^th) teaching our ‘Management of the Acutely Unwell Patient’ and Basic Life Support to 18 of the staff here. We have so far only taught it to small groups of 5 or 6 so this was a big change. We were really encouraged as everyone seemed enthusiastic and keen to take part. We had worried about doing the simulation training – giving people a clinical scenario and having them act out in ‘real-time’ what they would do etc.. as this is so different from how they usually learn and have training but they really embraced it and it went very well.

Gillbert teaching some airway skills

Another of our aims was to identify some people to take over and continue this training and development of essential skills after we leave (next week!). We have found one person, Gillbert, who is really keen and interested, he is an anaesthetic nurse here and part of the resuscitation team as well. He was key in setting up the training day and even organized us all to have a tea break and lunch at the canteen together which also made for a great team-bonding experience! We are hoping one or two others will come forward to help him continue this project and we are feeling more confident of the longer term effects of our teaching during our time here. We will hopefully have one more day to do the training next week and try and get Gilbert to lead a few of these sessions as well.