Yes ma'am!

Yesterday was amazing, I got to spend several hours with an Aboriginal (albeit with a Scottish great-grandfather) midwife. The other day I was standing at one of the sinks washing my hands when I noticed her, so I asked the lactation consultant who she was. Trish decided to introduce me and said, “Allison, this is our exchange student, Abby. Abby, this is Allison.” Without even looking at me, she turned in my general direction and said, “Nobody calls me by my Christian name. I’m Sister Bush.” Then she just turned back to the sink and rinsed off her hands. Okay then! Aye aye captain, note made. So I steered clear of her while she was in my department, kind of intimidated by the staff singing her praises and telling me what an influential and legendary midwife she is. I thought about that for a few days and then mentioned to Sandie, my Clinical Nurse Consultant (CNC), that I’d like to shadow Sister Bush for a day. So yesterday Sandie said that I would follow her today. At about 11 she called me to the antenatal department where we hung out and went to lunch. She showed me interesting materials, including posters aimed at Aboriginals, which are less wordy, in Aboriginal colors (red, yellow and black) and have Aboriginal art on them. On a side note, I learned today that a horseshoe shape of dots in Aboriginal art represents a person sitting. Anyway, Sister Bush has been involved in training courses for doctors, midwives and nurses on treating, and communicating with, Aboriginal patients, as well as training nurses and midwives from remote areas to evaluate and treat patients. There is a great manual that they give to health workers in remote areas, it’s a very simple book that covers everything from treating snake bites to preparing a patch of land to serve as a landing strip for the flying docs. We talked for a long time about the hostility between Aborigines and white Australians, as well as the history of the Aborigines. There were reservations where they were sent to live, and children were taken from their parents to be raised as white kids as early as a few weeks old. Substance abuse and violence are common issues among Aborigines, and the white Australians resent the government assistance offered to the Aborigines. She gave me some tips for establishing contact and building trust with Aborigines, including:

• Avoid constant eye contact. (She says this after a couple of hours where I’m eagerly leaning forward absorbing every word she says and after my eyes never left her face. Oops.) I told her that I thought we looked people in the eye to show we were listening to them, but she said, “We listen with our ears, not our eyes.”
• Don’t sit squarely opposite and face them full on, that’s very direct and personal (again, oops). Sit slightly angled and focus on something else if you can, like a journal or the baby.
• Never give them a specific task. For example instead of saying, “You need to come back for a check-up in three months” you say, “Some people need to come back for a check-up in three months.” She said to never make it specific, otherwise they will bail on you and balk at the obligation. So make it vague and general.
• Lastly, she said to use similes. Compare the kidneys to a river system that works best with plenty of fresh, running water. If there is a dam upstream then downstream the water could stagnate and it could affect wildlife, algae could get out of hand, etc.

Anyway, it was so amazing to walk around with her, and random people, total strangers, were stopping me in wards urgently asking me in a whisper if I was walking around with Sister Bush and how in the world did I arrange that??? She has apparently never allowed students to shadow her, so it was a big treat that I was allowed!

Continuing on the subject of nursing, I am have officially moved to the HDU (bless you!), where the babies are just a fraction smaller and need milk a little more frequently. I swear, sometimes I come home and dream about breast milk – argh! At least The Drag is not there, although I sometimes get a bad (evil) vibe when I walk by the door to my old nursery. And I can hear her when someone walks through the door still giving everyone grief. But not me! Now I’ve followed two young nurses who have been tremendously good at explaining things to me and letting me do things my own way. I’m in the HDU for one more week, then it’s up to NICU for two weeks. I’m supposed to be filling out a portfolio with different competencies that I’m supposed to be learning, but I guess the operative word here is “supposed”. I should probably start it, since it’s like 30 pages of blanks to fill out. Sigh.