Nursing in Cambodia

via Khmer NZ

MICHELE ONG - North Harbour News
Last updated 05:00 20/08/2010

LIVE TO TEACH: Metlifecare’s national clinical services manager Kim Brooks, left, and Bev Hopper of Silverdale will be travelling to Cambodia to share their nursing skills.

A SILVERDALE woman is heading to Cambodia in October to share her nursing skills.

Bev Hopper, who works at North Shore Hospital, has been selected by the New Zealand Orthopaedic Nurses Association to travel with a team of five.

The association will pay for her flight, insurance and part of her accommodation expenses, worth more than $2000.

It's Ms Hopper's first time to the southeast Asian country but she says she is going "with an open mind" and a passion to pass on "all things orthopaedic".

"I've already got a USB pen crammed full of notes. I'm looking to passing on what I know to the nurses so the quality of care they deliver can be improved."

The association's former president Kim Brooks says Ms Hopper's "flexible and adaptable" personality made her the ideal recipient.

"We need someone who is flexible to changes, because things may not go as planned. You could come fully prepared with your teaching materials but the hospital might have different ideas," she says.

Ms Hopper will be at Sihanouk Hospital Centre of Hope, a non-profit body, in Phnom Penh.

The centre provides 24-hour free medical care for poor and disadvantaged Cambodians.

It also gives further education and clinical training to medical professionals.

Mrs Brooks, who went last year, says there is a demand for orthopaedic care in Sihanouk Hospital.

"People fall off their motorbikes and they're not properly treated for it. It then becomes a deformity," she says.

"And over there, if you're seen as less than perfect you can't get a job, you can't get married – you get nothing."

Ms Hopper says the social stigma surrounding deformities is a problem but the hospital should be able to offer patients correct initial treatment.

"The nurses at Sihanouk Hospital want to be more proficient in orthopaedic nursing skills.

"And they're so grateful for any input from developed countries."

Mrs Brooks says there will be an interpreter at the hospital, but health terminologies sometimes get lost in translation.

"It's a problem there. I remember teaching a group of second year nurses and I had completely lost them."

The team will be spending a fortnight at Sihanouk Hospital before going to Siem Reap for a week to teach basic health care in the villages and orphanages.

Mrs Brooks says the conditions in slums are tragic – "things we have no idea about".

"I met a young woman who had just given birth and she was dehydrated.

"They had no clean water, so they gave her rice wine," she says.

"It's all very easy to tell them to not do it, and say `why don't you just boil water?' but it's just not possible for them.

"Where are they to get the water from?

"If they boil it, it's in a little flimsy cooker. If that tips over, their houses go up in flames."