Keep Calm and Dream Big

‘Keep calm and dream big’ are the words printed on my favourite t-shirt.

A friend gave it to me last Christmas and I simply love the words. ‘Dream big’ is something we encourage each other to do in this place that I work. 

 ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’  This is a famous quote by Nelson Mandela.

I have been thinking about these quotes a lot recently. Dreams just seem to get bigger and bigger. The impossible becomes possible and we just reach higher and higher. The ceiling becomes the new floor.

It is four years since I handed in my resignation to Bristol Children’s Hospital. It was a big dream and a seemingly impossible leap of faith to become a volunteer and live without earning a regular wage. Over the last few years we have dreamed bigger and bigger (and yes I do mean ‘we’ not ‘I’ – ‘we’ is my friends on board and back home who have dreamed with me).  We have developed the Mercy Ships Medical Capacity Building program and you can watch a 2 minute video called Lasting Impact, by clicking on the tab above (next to the Tab that says 'Home'). This describes some of our activities that the team and I have spent much time dreaming about. Those dreams, and seemingly impossibilities are now a reality.

But then the dreams just get bigger. Last November I was at a conference in Boston. It was a long way to travel from Madagascar for less than a week, but I knew it was an important opportunity. And it was there that God gave me another big dream idea to make surgery safer in Madagascar – teach the World Health Organisation (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist in all the Regional Hospitals.  My team, known as ‘the checklist team’ have been going now for one month, on a:

“twenty-city tour of Madagascar, visiting each region to come alongside the surgical teams in those regions and work together to improve surgical safety across the country. This training is in partnership with Harvard Medical School and Lifebox a charity committed to putting a pulse oximeter in every operating room and improving surgical safety worldwide. This simple tool (pulse oximeter), along with the other critical steps included in the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist have been shown to cut operating room deaths and complications in nearly half! .......The three-day training structure includes sessions focused on empowering surgical teams with the knowledge that safe surgery is possible, and in their very own hands. They will work together to adapt the WHO checklist to fit their specific needs and environment; a critical step encouraged by the creators of the WHO Checklist! Other sessions include Lifebox training and counting of surgical swabs, needles, and instruments.” (taken from Mercy Ships blog by Krissy Close)

No-one has done this before. At times I thought my dream was crazy, too big….but now it is happening. The beauty of the ‘checklist’ is that it empowers surgeons and anaesthetists and nurses to change something themselves. It is a low cost initiative, simply using what they have in a better way. They don’t need to wait for more money, new medication or equipment; the power to change and make surgery safer is truly ‘in their own hands’. That brings hope and inspiration into dark, hopeless places which are undoubtedly under-resourced and could do with new medication and equipment and more staff. But such is the inequality of surgical healthcare in our world. So being able to make a difference yourself with what you have can be very hopeful, and inspiring to many.

I am grateful that I don’t have to dream on my own. I am grateful for all of you who dream with me, support and encourage me in so many ways. These are shared hopes and dreams. Dreams for a better day. And part of another dream I blogged about shortly after I first arrived in Africa with Mercy Ships, this was July 2012 and if you scroll down this page to the bottom on the left-hand side you can click on 2012 and the July button to read that story.

Here's to dreaming big. Keep Calm and Dream Big, because as Nelson Mandela said 'It always seems impossible until it is done'.