Labor Day: A Year in Review of Working Abroad
Hey yâall,
In honor of Labor Day, I would like to highlight the things my God did through me over the past year. Though influencing positive change was far from a walk in the park, I was blessed with creative ideas to accomplish the following despite inadequate resources and limited support.
Completed over 50 public health presentations at the local health center, schools, and community in Spanish. Before living and working abroad, it was almost impossible to get me to speak Spanish, especially in front of a group of people. Over the past year, I overcame the fear of public speaking in Spanish and I also learned to approach my presentations with culturally appropriate games, activities, and discussions.
Lowered waiting room time by 1 hour and 30 minutes for patients who forgot medical file number. This may be tough for the younger generation of social media users to fathom but the health system in Ecuador is almost entirely paper-based. In a nutshell, each person has a folder called âmedical fileâ with their name, an assigned number and a record of their health status each time they visited the health center. When a patient forgets the file number, the staff at the health center is unable to pull the patientâs file and consequently the patient is unable to receive medical attention. In order for a patient to recover the file number, s/he has to search a big record book with all the patientsâ names and file numbers; in a nutshell it is a written database. Side note, this is totally against the US HIPAA Health Care Policy, but medical confidentiality is not âa thingâ in Ecuador so this process of recovering a forgotten medical file number is totally normal. The patient has to search for his/her name and then next to the name is the file number. The book is organized in numeric chronologically order not alphabetic chronological order; so, the patient has to search page by page instead of being able to skip to the specific section of the book with names starting with a certain letter. The process of recovering a medical file number can take as long as 2 hours. To expedite the process, I rewrote the names and numbers from the book into an electronic excel sheet. Now, a health worker may easily search a patientâs name on the excel sheet and recover the number within 30 minutes.
Improved workplace efficiency by 30 minutes for drawing medical files. After a patient receive medical attention, the folder needs to be re-organized in the filing room. However, since the health center is understaffed and everyone has a full list of things to do, the files are usually stacked on each other and out of order until someone is able to organize the files. If a patient visits the health center twice in a week, it would take as long as 40 minutes to find the file because a health workers would have to search the unorganized stack which usually comprise of more than 100 files. To improve workplace efficiency, I spent one hour each day organizing the medical files by numeric chronological order on the filing rack. This way, it is easier for a health worker to pull the file number from the organized file rack. The process of searching for a specific number and drawing the file takes less than 10 minutes.
Increased daily water intake from 0 cups to 1 liter per day. When I started working in ManabĂ, I completed a community needs assessment. The baseline result of daily water intake was 0 cups. To improve water intake, I provided each participant of the Elderly Group with a Personal Health Diary to set health goals and track progress related to water intake, fruit consumption, and exercise participation. I also challenged the group to meet at the health center once a week to exercise. The use of the personal health diary was influence by the Health Belief Model and the weekly exercise was influence by the Social Cognitive Theory. The combination of theory and practice contributed to the healthier lifestyle habit of drinking more water per day.
As I reflected on these small wins I was reminded of Colossians 3:23, âwhatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for man.â I tried working for man during my first months abroad and my ideas were often shutdown. Matter of fact, my Ecuadorian coworkers did not even know why I was there and no one was willing to help me fill the gaps within the health system. I often felt alone and confused as to why I left a good life to work in a foreign land. Things did not fall into place until I made an effort to work for The Lord. Working for The Lord was an adventure because when The Lord showed me problems, he also gave me ideas to solve the problem. I had to be bold with doing what I was instructed to do. I had to stop considering the criticisms and rejections I was receiving from my coworkers. While I was working to lower waiting room time, a lot of coworkers glared at me and one doctor even criticized me several times for not including more details on the electronic record. However, the Lord only instructed me to transform what was in the book into an excel sheet and the doctorâs recommendation was not in the book. I did what God told me to do. I finished the task. The outcome was promising. Then, the Director of the health center asked my permission to access the excel document, then another doctor, and before long I was sharing the document with all of my coworkers. I thank God for the invitation to work for Him because if I had kept working for man, this would not be my yearlong progress. In conclusion, I recommend working for God and shine forth!
Donette










