Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Nursing Students - Update

We are on our last week of work at the hospital here in Kenya. As Rianne mentioned, we have been spending our time working at St Theresa’s Mission hospital in Kiirua. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has passed; however, we have managed to gain a remarkable amount of knowledge and experience in the short time that we have spent here.

Last week, we travelled to Mukurwe-ini to visit Colleen and Lisa and see the work being done in their area. We had the pleasure of visiting the Wakulima dairy project and learning about the activities that take place there. We also accompanied them in carrying out their research on the quality life and diet of the community. Through travelling to different homes and conducting surveys, we were able to learn about the typical diet of a family in that particular community. As nursing students, this was of great interest to us considering how significantly the diet of an individual effects the outcome of their health and healing. It was not difficult to determine that the work of Farmer’s Helping Farmer’s greatly correlates with our work here as nursing students.

Tomorrow, we will be travelling to the Muchui women’s group to obtain a second set of blood pressures. After seeing this group of women several weeks ago, and determining how high their blood pressures were, we have decided to return once more to follow up. We are hoping that after having educated the women on lifestyle changes that can potentially lower blood pressure, and encouraging certain women whose BP’s were significantly high to see a Doctor, that these women are continuing to work on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We will keep everyone posted on whether or not our intervention was successful!

Marley

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