Mental preparation

As my next trip to West Africa with Mercy Ships is coming up soon (YAAAYYY!!) I've been planning ways to get back into the groove. After all, living on a ship and working in this unique hospital does take some creativity and adjustment. If you have been thinking about living or working on board a hospital ship in West Africa, feel free to try a few of these out and see how well you adjust. And of course, post and let me know how it works out for you!

*Disclaimer…”hospital life” suggestions are not meant to be tried in actual American hospitals, as some of these are by design not intended for western healthcare facilities.

Ship Life:

Invite five of your friends to stay with you for the next three months. You should all live in a partitioned one-room apartment, and take turns sleeping in the closet. Remove all the doors and hang curtains instead. All wall decorations should be magnetic.

Most of these new roommates will be medical professionals. At any given time, two should be working days, evenings, and nights respectively. Rotate shifts to keep things interesting.

At least half of your new roommates should speak another language. Learn medical terms in that language and try them out at work.

Set aside a small room for privacy and prayer, and spend time there regularly. Donate books in 10 different languages to the local library. Check them out in the middle of the night.

Line up for mealtimes at 0730, 1200 and 1700 each day. Eat together with 400 of your closest friends. Have fried plantains at least once a week.

When you go out into town, don’t wear shorts no matter how hot it is. Go with at least 5 other people for safety. At least 8-12 people should fit into each taxi...15-20 per van. Never pay the initial asking price. Sit on top of each other. Bring goats.

Move somewhere very sunny, and then take Doxycycline. Keep your apartment temperature above 90 degrees. Drink at least 4 liters of water daily. Eat the goats.

Fill plastic bags with water. Refuse to drink any water that comes out of the tap. Instead, drink out of the bags...or your nalgene.

Leave a lawnmower running in the living room for proper noise levels. Occasionally bang on pots. Turn on the vacuum every time you flush the toilet. Color water green and put it in the bathroom. Once a week measure some out and flush it down the toilet.

When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while soaping down. Limit yourself to two total minutes of shower water per day and one load of laundry per week.

Have a birthday party at least once or twice a week. Invite 50 friends. Play baseball with an empty Pringles can as a bat. Cook plenty of sweets, using at least 5 mangoes. If you bake a cake, GoogleTranslate the instructions into Dutch, then ask your roommates to help you figure them out.

Stop wearing heels. Climb 50 flights of stairs per day. Watch the sunset over the ocean.

Ask famous national leaders to visit. Invite them to make a speech, or share their testimonies. Then give them a tour of your workplace. Introduce them to patients. Throw them a party.

Bring maracas and drums to church. Dance excitedly during worship. Encourage friends to dance with you. Sing in several different languages. Provide two translators for the pastor. Have a 100 person church service in your living room with all the patients from the hospital.

Announce emergency drills every other Thursday afternoon. Gather with a group of your friends in the dining room. Pretend to do CPR. Every few months change the drills to 3 times a week with life jackets. Take roll call.

Set up a rotating schedule to watch for pirates. Dress up like pirates. Watch Pirates of the Caribbean on a laptop. Then watch Titanic and the Guardian. Then hide for an hour in an undisclosed location.

Get up excited for work, knowing that God is in control and making a difference in hearts and lives!

Hospital Life:

Make individualized balloon animals for each patient. Hang them above their beds. Play volleyball with the balloons.

If family members want to stay, provide mattresses for them under the bed. Encourage family to stay for a few days...the more, the merrier!

Put all the patient beds two feet apart. Encourage your patients to get to know each other.

Pantomime all instructions and questions to patients. Insist on teaching each new admission how to use a toilet. Put up signs depicting improper toilet use.

Go to work in flip-flops. Bring your Ipod. Play music with a catchy beat to entertain the patients.

If the patient needing a transfusion is your blood type, offer to be the donor. Have your friend collect the unit while your bed is moving. Then start the IV and transfuse your own blood...by drip.

Refuse to use prefilled saline flushes. Draw up all of your own flushes instead. Wash the medicine cups and basins, and the Toomey syringes.

Start IVs with an emesis basin at the bedside. Don’t retract your needles; instead, put them in the basin. All IVs should be 18ga or larger.

Carry your pediatric patients up several flights of stairs, then take them outside in the sunshine and let them play on tricycles. Draw pictures on their casts with sharpie markers.

Refuse to use regular IV pumps. Instead use burettes, or syringe pumps, or calculate drip rates.

When the pain meds aren't working...blow bubbles, color, and put on fake tattoos!!

Dress your patients in surgical gowns and caps. Have tricycle races at 5 in the morning. Then wrap their IV sites in trash bags and encourage them all to shower.

Chart all of your temperatures in Celsius and weights in kilograms. If a temperature is above 37.5 consider malaria.

Hang privacy curtains from hooks in the ceiling. Move them around according to need.

CPAP? Take apart the crash cart and put together equipment that fits. Use Coban instead of elastic face straps.

Regularly have dance parties at work. Play the drums. Encourage your patients to play the drums. Provide crochet hooks in place of drumsticks.

Pray during shift change and ask your patients to join you. Wear matching scrubs with all your co-workers.

Play Jenga with your patients.

Scrub the wards on your hands and knees…on camera. Then watch when Discovery Channel airs the episode.

Pray during emergency codes. Ask for the resuscitation trolley. Who needs a crash cart??

Make sure to specify if a regular diet includes snake or not. This may be important.

Announce an emergency blood drive overhead. Draw blood from all your friends that are A+ or B+.

Need to do a stress test? Have your patient run up and down several flights of stairs, and then do an EKG.

Import medications from Europe. Ask other nurses to translate instructions for you. Refer to acetaminophen products as “paracetamol” and Versed as “midaz.” Double check with pharmacy before giving your IV medications orally, and optical preparations aurally.

Let your patients check their NG tube placement when you do, and ask if they would like to watch dressing changes with a mirror.

Crying baby? Tie them to your back with a sheet and keep doing your nursing work. They'll happily fall asleep soon.

Look at the drool spots on your scrubs...and smile fondly at the adorable brown baby who fell asleep while you were charting. Thank God that you get to be here.