Nursing in Sevilla ‑ Spring 2011

Feria – 2.-6. May. One of the things you can’t experience nowhere but here. So traditional, so “grande fiesta”, reward of yet another long preparation. I was lucky to get some invitations to private tents, and were enjoying of the rebujitos / traditional drinks with really sour white wine and sprite, fried fish and sevillanas dance with some good friends. The party lasts whole week, from early morning and through all night. People say, that they’d need a one week vacation after feria, since everybody’s so exhausted, as you can imagine.

I was meeting my classmates at the Feria area too. Valle was the only one of us wearing the traditional flamenco dress. ( I learned a secret, that there’s a hidden pocket under the lower part layers in the dress, so the girls don’t have to carry purses while dancing their sevillanas dance. How handy is that! ).

This is the main gate for the Feria. They change it for every year, and on the first night of Feria they light the hundreds of light bulbs in the gate. And as you can see, everybody’s dressing up, women wearing their dresses and flowers in their head.

I spent the March in community nursing, in a community health care center of Dos Hermanas. It’s a bit more far than Bellavista where I normally have my practice, but the smaller place – the more I usually like it. Nurses have quite a lot of work there, but the work is more interesting than working daily on a same ward. The building doesn’t look so welcoming from outside, but from inside the facilities were pretty good and new. As I started at 8 in the morning, I were taking some blood examples until 10, (that was normally around 50 tubes of blood). Then we took off our white jackets, and went to the cafeteria close by for a breakfast, and afterwards grabbed some supplies and went to see some patients in their homes. I was taking loads of blood pressures, and putting im. injections, filling several types of health questionnaires and creating a picture in my mind about the state of community health in this area. I liked the way how often the whole family gathered around the dining table, and we were chatting with all of them, not only with the patient. Don’t know if it was about the authority my colleague nurses had in their voice, or then the patients just generally listens really what the community nurses tell them. …Although, there’s always exceptions. After “domicilio”, visiting patients houses, we had some consulting nurse hours, or then vaccinations and check ups for children under 5 years.

I loved the people! We had so many laughs together – and I often made some silly mistakes because of not being a native speaker of spanish, and I believe I made days a lot more funnier for the staff too. :) Some nurses and doctors gave me a small farewell party when I had my last day there, and everybody bought some small tapas. Nobody had knives to cut the cheese, tortilla de batatas or chocolate cake, so we improvised and used some surgical knives… I will miss these people! Also because in the hospital I’m always changing from ward to ward, it’s often hard to get to know people, or to get real friends among the staff.

Friday the 16th was the Annual Day of Solidarity. The University have had Haiti as a theme earlier as well, but it was important to turn our heads towards the area once again. What has happened during this time, after the earthquake of January 2010? Where does the donated money go to? And what is the work like, how it will change you as a person when you are working among the ruins? Ruins, both human and material.

I am very interested of having the possibility of participate all these events the local students here have. This particularly, to compare the information to everything what I already have heard from Dr. Ilkka Mikkonen in Finland. At the end of the lecture, I thought that would be really interesting to really see how World Food Program, Red Cross, Doctors Across the Borders and Unifef really work together, or do they? Are the people in the crisis area uncertain, which of these associations should they ask for help?

From left to right; Dª Carmen Bazarra Rojas, representative of COVIDE-AMVE, D. Jesús González Zambrana, president of the Doctors across the borders,  of Andalusia. D. Fransisco Cumbreras Santana, general coordinator of Engineers without borders. Dª. Rosa Mª Muñoz Román, director of the support service to the University Community.

Description: (direct translation from the leaflet).

“We recognize the crucial role that has the information in the fight against the oblivion of those areas that have suffered some kind of disaster, mainly the poorest, they are no longer newsworthy as the immediacy of the emergency stop, then step to the challenge reconstruction to a normal one can never be the same. In these cases, the health must go hand in hand with other professionals that make possible the allocationof resources essential to survival, to ensure respect for the rights and the maintenance of the particular idiosyncrasies of the devastated regions,forming a multidisciplinary team which everyone, and especially we as a community college can and must become involved.

Therefore, on this occasion, our efforts will be aimed at support the project currently being undertaken by the Organization “COVIDES-AMVE“,consisting of the Daughters of Charity and Vincentian Pardres, namely the creation of a shelter in Tabarre municipality (Haiti), intended to mitigate the urgent need to provide a space to host and attend, in a comprehensive manner, a group of 50 underage girls, who are at risk andsocial exclusion, many of including orphans and / or abandoned as a result of the catastrophic earthquake which occurred on January 12, 2010, which to we will donate the funds raised in this Day.”

After the lectures, you could hang out at the yard, play games like twister and win prizes, or buy some non-alcohol beer and soft drinks with tapas from the bar made for the day. Good spirit, nice afternoon. People were talking, eating, playing. I was introduced to several new students, teachers and some principals even. There was even some theatre in shows later in the evening, but I already went home.