BAPTISM BY FIRE

We often say that some of our qualities surface when we are facing great challenges. It happened to me…Let me explain.

When I returned from my trip in France, the nurse who held the position of Medical Team Leader (MTL) was leaving for her vacation. The MTL is my immediate supervisor in the field. At that time, I took on some of her responsibilities temporarily.  But, as Murphy’s Law would have it, an incident prevented her to return to the project and I am still wearing her hat on top of mine.

For the last five weeks, I have taken under my wing the TB/HIV (Tuberculosis and AIDS), maternity, laboratory, and pharmacy departments. I also had to facilitate transfers and discussions about our patients between our doctors and others from Bangui (the capital) and Paoua (MSF-France). In addition, we are getting ready to send our international medical order, which will have a great impact on our care delivery in the spring of 2014.  Finally, our new expat doctor has just arrived and I have to help her integrate into our team and the project and figure out what her duties are – quite the challenge since we have not had an expat physician with us since June!

I have to admit that all these accumulating challenges allowed me to shine somewhat. My qualities of leader and coordinator have been well demonstrated. I love to do this kind of thing and the more I have, the better I perform.

I think the trick, for me, is to just take one item at the time – there is only one of me to accomplish all these tasks and I can’t divide myself in two or four in order to do it all. I was clear with the new PC – I will give it 100% but it might not be as quick as she might wish. All she told me was: “Do what you have to, do it right and all will be good.”

So I used all my assets – my team! All the supervisors (IPD, Maternity, TB/HIV), the new doctor, the other supervisors from the pharmacy, hygienists and laboratory and we hit it head on. And we succeeded in all of the tasks.

We were able to provide good care to our patients and we tackled the small daily issues brilliantly. The war wounded arrived, were taken care of and left all in good health. The orders were done and sent each week and we did not run out of anything (nor did our patients!) The international order was completed with the help of the doctor (Thanks Elisa!), our fin/admin (Thank you Roberta!) and me. We were even the first of the country to submit our orders – both medical and logistics (Bravo Boguila!)

And just when I thought that I could breathe easier…Our MTL must now go to Bossangoa, town located about 100km from here, without coming to Boguila. Bossangoa has seen a number of armed confrontations in the last little while and they are without expat nurses, which is why we are lending them one of ours while they wait for the assigned one to arrive. Life must go on!

But wait! I am now asked to replace the x-ray technician who has just resigned and we do need our patients suffering from respiratory infections and the TB/HIV patients to have chest x-rays.

I am telling you: with MSF, you are never bored and you learn constantly! Bring it on! I am ready for anything!

Janique