Tutorials in the Field

 A few times a month, a clinical officer (usually accompanied by a medical student -- or a lowly elementary school teacher on hiatus) will mobilize a small number of Village Health Workers at a spot near their home villages, usually a church or a school with the purpose of extending their education in a less formal setting.

My friend and clinical officer Dickson and I jumped on a motorcycle last week to lead one of these tutorial sessions. The roads were particularly bad (potholes that resembled the grand canyon -- nearly to scale), and the views were spectacular. We made it to both meeting sites and reviewed the homework the VHWs had been assigned at their last training at the hospital.

There is also time for the VHWs to ask questions they might not have had the guts to during our full-group classes. Even though I was filtered through the very accommodating translating of my fellow teacher Dickson, it felt great to be inspiring questions from interested students and doing my best to answer them. I've picked up enough basic medical knowledge organizing these last few months of VHW trainings to at least nod in assent when I hear a correct answer.

These VHWs are the newest cohort, only officially "on the job" for a the last few months, so they have a lot of questions and doubts but we are doing our best to encourage and empower them to be the primary linkage between their community and the wider healthcare network. Ideally, once they've been trained enough, these men and women (but mostly women!) will be able to treat most common illnesses right in the homes of their neighbors and will have the experience to know when a hospital referral is appropriate.

It feels great to be out riding through the countryside with the wind rushing past us and the sky wide open above, but it's perhaps even more satisfying to arrive to find adult students waiting to learn more about how to best care for the health of their communities.