Lasting Impact: Inspiration

SO far the facts speak for themselves, 1000’s have been healed and 1000’s have been trained, since we arrived in Madagascar in late August 2015

 

As Mercy Ships seeks to follow the 200 year old model of Jesus and bring hope and healing to the world's forgotten poor, we too want to leave a lasting impact. We want to leave a lasting impact on our patients and on those we train. We want to be remembered as an inspiration to 100’s and 1000’s.

So, I wonder who or what inspires you?

Maybe you had a teacher who encouraged you at school.….maybe you have sporting or political icon who you look up to…. maybe it was a professional mentors who inspired you in your career? Or maybe it was just a quotation you read somewhere, and is now a motto you seek to live your life by. I have several friends whose email signatures contain a quote, which is particularly meaningful to them.

When we think of these inspirational individuals, while some of us will think of something specific they did, often I think we can't. We don’t remember exactly what they did or said that inspired us, but rather it was just a sense of something about them. Something tangible yet difficult to articulate. I think it is often the sense of relationship that creates the feel of lasting impact. A sense of being believed in, or trusted in, or invested in……simply loved and encouraged.

And I hope that is what every single one of the numbers above feel. The 1000’s of patients and 1000’s of healthcare workers we have trained.  I hope we have been an inspiration to them and had a lasting impact on them, in a way that outlasts the time Mercy Ships is in Madagascar. We will leave here in a couple of months and I hope we have made a difference. They wont remember everything that I told them about their surgery and anaesthesia and post-operative instructions, but I hope they remembered we cared, and that inspires them to care for others. They won't remember everything I taught them on a training course, but I hope they remembered we were pleased to be there and enjoyed teaching them, and that inspires them to teach others.

When I watch the Mercy Ships YouTube videos https://www.youtube.com/user/mercyshipsvideos and read the comments on our training course feedback forms, I think I know. We have made a lasting impact. And I have loved every minute I have spent here. It is worth the sacrifice.

Dr Hasina

One of my highlights about this year has been the success of our ‘big dream’ project – to implement the World Health Organisation Surgical Safety Checklist in all the regional hospitals in Madagascar. It has been a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG). And thanks to a wonderful team effort  - a team made up of some the most incredible people I know – this BHAG has almost been achieved.

One of these incredible people is Dr Hasina Rakotoarison. She is a Malagasy doctor has been working full time on this project since August 2015, and had previously helped me try out some ideas earlier in 2015 that paved the way for this big project. 

Hasina loves her country and her people and is passionate about bringing hope and healing through healthcare to those in need.

Here are some of Hasina's reflections on her experience  which she has allowed us to share. The photos have come from Dr Linden Baxter, another member of the team who originally shared Hasina’s story on her blog a few weeks ago. 

I had never heard of the Checklist until my Supervisor at the Hospital proposed it as an interesting topic for my thesis to finish my medical degree. I chose to study this area because I was very interested in patient safety, and the Checklist was little known in Madagascar but had astonishing benefits for the safety of the patient having surgery. I always had in mind that I want to become a surgeon, so I planned to apply the checklist to my own work, but I never imagined that I could have an opportunity to share the benefits of the checklist with other teams around the country.  For me, this project with Mercy Ships is very exciting because it has made a dream of mine come true; to share what I have learned and spread the message to surgical teams in every region.

During the last 17 training courses, I have discovered that many other people are also very passionate about increasing the security of patients undergoing surgery, but they don’t have many opportunities to discuss this together and find practical solutions. Even though I am Malagasy myself, I did not realise the challenges some of these teams face in their everyday working lives. For example, some teams in remote regions are very isolated, the health care needs of their population can be very great, and the hard-working hospital staff manage in difficult conditions.

 

Hasina the local doctors and nurses adapt their own Checklist for the operating room

This training course has given me an opportunity to encourage those who share the vision to increase the quality of care for patients, and work together with them to make that vision a reality in their local hospital.

I have also seen how a tool like the Checklist can transform the atmosphere in teams, improving communication and working relationships. Even our training team didn’t recognise the significance when some hospital teams said that the secret of their success was ‘love’. This is something I have learned from them when I read the feedback forms! Because even such a simple word like ‘”LOVE” I didn’t understand until much later when I came to realise how right they were in saying you have to “Love each other”. The Checklist is not just a simple tool, it can change the whole hospital. The Checklist brings love with it and can change everything at a place where it is implemented well. We have noticed that where teams support each other and communicate well, you can FEEL the difference in the working atmosphere if they have love in their team.

 

The Checklist can reinforce relationships in the operating room by helping teams work TOGETHER for the good of the patient

The hospital teams I have met on this project demonstrate by their actions the true meaning of ‘love’ described in book of Corinthians:

‘Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.’ 1 Cor 13:7

In the future, I wish to remember those people from the places I have visited where there is great need, and would love to have the opportunity to revisit them to assist in providing healthcare and bringing ‘hope and healing’.

 

Hasina volunteers as a patient for a simulated operation to practice using the checklist. One day she hopes to come back as the surgeon!

Where there is love there is life

Kirstie (my good friend and the Africa Mercy Hospital Director) and I have spent the last few days in the capital city Antananarivo having various meetings. One meeting concerned our program to treat women with obstetric fistula. A devastating condition caused by lack of obstetric care resulting in permanent and constant urinary incontinence. The women are left as outcasts, stigmatised due to the terrible smell. At the end of the meeting one of the doctors told this story. 

He said that recently one of the Chiefs from a rural village had noticed how 'strong' one of the ladies was when she returned home after her fistula surgery The Chief had noticed it wasn't just about her physical strength but she seemed 'stronger'.  Another doctor in the meeting then piped up that she had looked at the Mercy Ships website and realised that we don't just care about the physical healing but about healing of the soul as well. She said that there are ladies far away in the south who could have the opportunity to have surgery there but they have refused because they want to come to Tamatave (several days travel away and where Mercy Ships is) because they know they will find love there. She flung her arms in a big embrace and said,  ‘it is like they know they will be surrounded by love if they come to you’.

Where there is love there is life

It is a quote by Mahatma Ghandi. I had not heard it before until Dr Elizabeth Sercombe from evolute ( http://www.surfmonasteryfoundation.com ) used it in a leadership training course she did for our hospital leadership team on the ship.

Où il y a de l'amour il y a de la vie

This is the French version of the quote. Elizabeth used this to start the Mercy Ships medical leadership training course at the local hospital. And it reminded me of a conversation I had a number of years ago in Congo with an orthopaedic surgeon. I was asking him about training needs in his hospital and how we could help. It was his answer to how we could help his nurses that stopped me in my tracks. He said  ‘can you teach our nurses how to care for patients?’ That answer changed my mind-set forever.

It led me to embrace the idea of ‘loved ones caring for loved ones’. Training is more than just a transfer of information - knowledge and skills. It is something deeper. Transformation is about the head and the hands and the heart.

If I had known of Mahatma Ghandi’s quote ‘where there is love there is life’ I might have used that instead. As part of Elizabeth’s teaching she explains the concept of an organisation as a living system where everything is reaching for life. She encouraged us to ‘stay present in the mess’ and to have those crucial conversations and to help and love each other towards life. Life that releases us all to be more of who were are created to be. It had echo’s for me of Marcus Buckingham’s book, The one thing you need to know…about great managing, great leading, and sustained individual success. The chapters on ‘great managing’ embody the concepts of seeing the best in others and helping them achieve personal success.

SO all that to say, today on Valentines Day, my heart is full. I have heard stories of ‘loved ones caring for loved ones’, and I want to live and work in a system that believes as Mahatma Ghandi said, ‘where there is love, there is life’. And I am grateful I know a God who is the embodiment of love.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Transformation, as illustrated by a participant on our medical leadership course: Eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to love.