Midwife With Altitude: Exploring midwifery in Nepal: A.P.S Training Day

So on Monday Rashmi suddenly managed to organise the staff for a training day today. It went ahead seamlessly. Two of the midwives who had been involved in the planning were no longer available to attend which left myself and one other midwife. Then last night a banda (strike) was announced and this morning Rashmi called to say none of the girls could attend so we had to cancel. At half past ten she called again to say all the girls had turned up and could we do it anyway. I tried to call the other midwife who could speak nepali but could not get through so went on ahead to the birth centre on my own and Rashmi came along a bit later.

It was by no means perfect. It was too long. I had known this before but as it had been so difficult to arrange the time off for the girls I decided to include more than was ideal. Doing it in English was also not ideal though Rashmi was on hand to translate complicated sections. The girls had quite a variation of experience with some having very little knowledge at all and others having a good grasp of the basics which made it slightly harder to pitch.

But it was good fun! I tried to keep it fairly simple but convey the main points and tried really hard to ensure they had understood and were not just nodding along out of politeness. I started each section with them brainstorming as a group everything they knew about the subject to give me some idea of what level to pitch it. I then went over the theory and followed with practical role plays. It was exhausting but fun, the girls did really well concentrating for so long and laughed a lot at me demonstrating the knee chest position and practicing the McRoberts manoeuvre. It felt like a good start.