I had the chance to
pitch my ideas to some of the key hospital administrators, and the conversation
ended up as a spirited debate. In the
end, many of my recommendations were accepted, but a couple weren’t. Coming from a medical background, I found
this to be a little bit of an unusual situation. Sure, there are patients labeled as “noncompliant”,
but in medicine –especially in a tertiary care hospital setting like the
University of Michigan – patients listen to their doctor’s advice more often
than not. But here, the relationship is
very much unlike the patient-doctor interaction I’ve grown used to. There were good arguments on both sides, to be
sure, but in the end this is the Rwandan system, and it must reflect the values
of those who work in it every day. It’s
been an interesting change of pace to help build capacity in this system and
let go of an idea sometimes, rather than to diagnose and treat in a specific,
standardized way.
Since getting the
in-principal approval of the recommendations I’ve been working on laying the
groundwork to switch over. One of the
key recommendations that this spring’s MAP team made, and I’ve modified
somewhat, is the implementation of an electronic registration and appointment
system to replace the laborious paper version that is currently being
used. So to begin the transition, my
translator Delphine and I have been giving computer lessons for the better part
of the last month and learning about the student-teacher relationship in the
process. We began well ahead of our
expected implementation date, and I’m glad we did; we’ve needed every
minute! We’re training a group of
employees who work around the registration system, none of whom had ever used a
computer before. And it has been slow
going.
I knew I would have
to do some computer training going in, but the total lack of experience on the
students’ end has proven to be a really interesting and unexpected
challenge. In retrospect, I suppose it
was to be expected, but I think it speaks to the nature of our totally
technologically integrated society that I hadn’t consciously considered that
the employees here wouldn’t have a minimum level of experience with
computers. So I’ve had to learn rather
quickly how to impart a skill that comes so naturally to me, but that my pupils
have absolutely no frame of reference for.
I tried to start at
the very beginning and go as slow as possible.
The whole first session was devoted to turning a laptop on and moving
the cursor through the touchpad. Even
the simplest function was totally alien to them, and it’s been a challenging
daily exercise for the better part of a month now. Yet at the same time, these women have made
enormous progress. Yes, we’re still
working on double-clicking and using scroll bars, but they’re getting more and
more functional each day. And most
importantly, they’ve been incredibly enthusiastic and willing to try new things
the entire time we’ve been working together. And I think I've learned as much from our time together as they have! Patience, time, and the eagerness to learn are the key factors that I’ve
taken away from this experience that will help me to be both a better teacher
and student in the future.
 |
| Our class in session |
We’ve made enough
progress that we’re looking at piloting the new system this week. Within the next couple days, we should have
an idea of how well this is going to work in practice, and we can begin
troubleshooting the inevitable unforeseen problems. But for now, I’m just excited to see how the
culmination of the work so far looks in action!
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