Sophia Hicks, a third year nursing diploma student, is interested in the developing world and attended the Global Health Partnerships 2012 conference which directly relates to the work the School of Nursing and Midwifery has been doing in Zambia.
Sophie tells us about her experience:
"I have always dreamt about nursing abroad so when I saw the Global Health Partnerships conference advertised, I realised it was time to converge my romanticised notion of nursing abroad with the reality. The Global Health Partnerships: Nurses and Midwives Making a Difference conference was held at Guy's Hospital, a collaboration between THET (Tropical Health and Education Trust), the RCM (Royal College of Midwives) and the RCN (Royal College of Nursing). The opening speaker was the parliamentary under secretary of state for international development, Stephen O'Brien. Focusing on the positive legacy that volunteering abroad brings the NHS, he made a convincing argument for why employees should question future staff on why they haven't been away, rather than why they have.
"The following session was about individual experiences within global partnerships. Four speakers all involved in separate sub-Saharan Africa health links gave presentations on their involvement. It was a truly humbling experience to hear about the enormity of work that goes into establishing and maintaining the links. Common problems were sporadic communication, language barriers, the difficulty of sustaining projects, personal expectations, differing concepts of time and cultural unfamiliarity to name but a few. The overall message from these speakers was that the link projects must be an equal partnership with mutual objectives that both sides must wholly believe in and commit to.
"Spurred on by tea and cakes, we were then treated to a presentation by Jill Durrant and Susanne Simmons, both senior lecturers at the University of Brighton (School of Nursing and Midwifery), on the Brighton-Lusaka health link. The partnership between Brighton and Sussex Medical School, the School of Nursing and Midwifery and University Teaching Hospital Lusaka (UTH) in Zambia was established in 2005 and it was amazing to hear about the scope of projects that are ongoing within the link. UTH is the largest hospital in Zambia, catering for 2 million people, the majority of whom will be living on under a dollar a day, as is the case with 85% of the Zambian population. The School of Nursing and Midwifery has been involved in the link for the last couple of years, co-ordinating a train the trainer HIV management course and developing a critical care nursing programme. September 2011 saw the first advanced paediatric life support (APLS) course taking place, following an audit in 2006 that revealed 63% of children dying within 48 hours of admission to UTH. The course equipped 11 medical staff with the skills needed to teach the APLS course to other staff and thereby reducing the high incidence of child mortality. Susanne and Jill described their recent visit to Lusaka, a needs assessment visit to gauge the feasibility of developing a paediatric nursing course in UTH which would be the first course of its kind in Zambia and would be a valuable resource to care for the 20,000-30,000 paediatrics that are admitted every year. The link is currently waiting to hear whether their THET funding bid has been successful.
"The conference was a fantastic introduction to the reality of global health partnerships; it was a real privilege to hear from so many people who are involved so passionately with such inspiring yet challenging work. Hearing about the range of opportunity to work in this field was invaluable and beginning to understand more concretely the benefits that global health partnerships bring to both parties was really important."
