Mamprobi Polyclinic

After finishing at 37 Military Hospital, we spent two weeks at the Mamprobi Polyclinic, which is similar to a community health center. Different clinics within included, nutrition, community health, mental health, STI, family planning, antenatal, maternity and labor and delivery, postpartum, and outpatients (and probably a few more I’m forgetting). It is located in an area called Mamprobi and it took anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours to reach.

We spent the first week at the polyclinic rotating through the various clinics inside. I spent two days at in labor and delivery (and failed to see any deliveries!), one in nutrition, and one between mental health and family planning.

The polyclinic does not have an inpatients, but it does have a labor and delivery ward, where midwives assist with deliveries. After delivering, women and babes are sent to a post-partum unit until they are well enough to go, which is quite often only a few hours. While I didn’t see any deliveries, there were a few emergencies that happened including meconium staining, postpartum hemorrhage, obstructed labor, and a babe in respiratory distress. I found it a little unnerving have such things happening at this clinic, as the woman would have to get a taxi to be transferred over to a major hospital about 10-15 minutes away (and that depending on how the traffic is).

The nutrition clinic has many focuses including weight gain or loss, cardiac and diabetic diets, etc. They also focus on rehabilitation for malnourished children. This program starts with the Community Health Nurse who assesses for malnutrition at child welfare clinics. Malnourished clients will be referred and encouraged to attend the nutrition clinic every day, where they will receive nutrition counseling and learn how to cook different foods in nutritious ways. Food supplies for breakfast and lunch are provided.

The mental health clinic was interesting as I sat in with a psychiatric nurse (who also happens to be the pastor of a Pentecostal church) doing patient counseling. Patient confidentiality flew right out the window (or perhaps it was never there to begin with), as the nurse assessed the patient, with me and about 5 other nursing students and a few nurses present. At times there would even be another patient in the same room. It seems absurd to me, but the patients didn’t seem to mind or be worried about others hearing about their illness/situation.

We spent the second week in community health, where we would be paired up with a community health nursing team to go out and do either child welfare or school clinics. I spent three days doing child welfare clinics, which consists of weighing babies and giving immunizations. The last day I spent at a school clinic where we went to a school for kids 3-5 years of age. There were (according to one teacher) about 500 kids at this school. The nurses and three of my peers and I sat in a semi-circle, while the kids lined up on benches and then came to us one by one to be assessed. We did a quick head-to-toe assessment on each child, assessing their skins, eyes, nose, ears, heads, looking for rashes or boils, anemia, lice, etc. It was a pretty intense process…much like an assembly line. Most of the kids were so excited to see us, but a few sobbed when they had to come near us. We seem to have that effect on kids! Haha.

Overall my time at Mamprobi was refreshing and a lot of fun. I appreciated seeing a different side of Ghanaian health care and felt like I had actually contributed and was able to help. At the end of the week I finished up my final assignment, a photo journal on water and sanitation. No more journals, papers, powerpoints or presentations!