Success at CHUB

     So often I write about the frustrations and difficulty of my job here in Rwanda and there are so many that often I forget to focus on the successes. It's easy to forget about them, they can be so few and far between and often very small. However we had a major success last week that I didn't mention because I got distracted by a meeting with the Honerable Minister herself, as well as Scott's arrival. More on those later.

     The big success we had last week was the first ever Basic Life Support (BLS) class taught entirely by our Rwandan colleagues with absolutely no help from the HRH Nurses at all. None. I didn't do a single thing, nor did Julie, Melody, Veronica, or Medie. In February when I called a meeting of all the BLS Instructors and informed them of the transition plan with my list of activities that the HRH staff were involved in and my pretty colored transition timeline of how we were going to phased our roles out over the next 12 weeks... They looked at me in complete horror. Isaac, one of my ICU Seniors and a fabulous teacher point blank said to me, "But Alexandra, this is not enough time." I stood firm. I pointed out that the only activity they were going to take over the very next week was providing a computer and a projector. I never said that they couldn't borrow one of ours, but I wanted them to realize how much of the behind the scenes we had been doing and to take responsibility for the class. All they had to do was ask to borrow one of our projectors or computers, but they went above and beyond and actually arranged to borrow the hospital projector. I didn't argue with their plan, I just let them roll with it. I was actually pretty surprised. I had not expected them to take on so much responsibility so quickly, but they did. On April 30th they told me that they would SMS me when it was time for testing so that I could lend a hand. By 4:30 pm when I still had not received the text I wandered over. They were doing it themselves. On May 7th I didn't help collect the mannequins, set anything up, print any copies, or update the certification tracking sheet. Neither did any other HRH nurses.
     It was a great day. Today, we are facilitating Instructor Training of six new instructors. We are all trying to wrap things up as our time winds down here and make sure that we've made a sustainable and lasting impact here. It's been hard and it's been a lot of hair pulling and exhaustion, however, to see them succeed, makes it all worth it.

Lessons Learned:
1) Every moment counts.