Visitor & Teacher

I am nearing the end of my first week in Rwanda, and I am on the steep part of the learning curve of not only how to live here, but how to be a teacher. It's been challenging for two main reasons. First, I am an R5 nearing the end of my training and feel compelled to convince myself that I am able to run my own room. Thus coming to Rwanda as a visiting resident teacher, I have had to hold myself back from doing things I have come to do pretty automatically once I step into an OR.
Second, I've realized that by being a teacher you come to see your 'knowledge-territory' clearly. Having to answer good questions or explain a concept in a different way in fact showed me what I myself understood. In essence it's been an exercise in patience both with others and myself. Difficult, but definitely a welcome challenge.

While at times draining, the best part about being a teacher is seeing those light bulbs light up, hearing those gears mesh & start turning inside the students' heads. In addition to teaching the anesthesia residents, Avi & I have also been asked to give short teaching sessions to the anesthesia technicians, the recovery room nurses and the ICU nurses. On Friday, I gave a 30 minute talk to the ICU nurses about the basics of resuscitation, the famous "ABC" algorithm. For the non-medical personnel, this scheme is considered to be the basic tenet of resuscitation, where in order to prevent someone from passing away, you need to establish an Airway, assess and support the patient's Breathing, then assess and support the patient's Circulation.

After I started, it was clear that the nurses had read about assessing the ABCs but only as an esoteric curiosity in a book. However, once we started to discuss an imaginary case, I saw that most of the nurses already instinctively understood what the algorithm meant. It was just a matter of helping them to organize their thoughts in a manner that would be practical and useful for them. We worked as a group to manage the imaginary case, the nurses managing the patient and me making choking and snoring noises while scribbling on the whiteboard. At the end of the half-hour, the grateful sincere smiles and the repeated requests to come again tomorrow morning were all I needed to be on cloud nine for the rest of the day. I felt like I had shared superbly delicious chocolate with them.