MIDIRS Essence > June 2009 > Student/Tutor feature

Elective placement in The Gambia

Originally posted on Jun 2009

We are third year midwifery students, Ashley Pedersen and Pamela Brodie, and are coming to the end of our training at Liverpool John Moores University, an experience that we agree has been the most amazing, challenging and terrifying achievement of our lives.

In the last three years we have undoubtedly fallen in love with midwifery - it is not perfect, we have had our ups and downs, but nonetheless we are both eager to embark on the next chapter.

Since our first year the lure of the elective placement has had a great influence on us both. At John Moores University, all third year midwifery students are allocated a six-week elective placement. Many students use this time to gain further experience in the trusts they have trained in, however we felt that an elective placement should be a time of new experiences and reflection and wanted to make the most of this enticing opportunity.

With little idea of what to expect, we started planning! The Gambia, West Africa came naturally as our destination as Pamela had spent time there between 1998 and 2001 and remained awe-inspired by the country and its people. For Ashley it was the opportunity, as a facilitator of normality, to further broaden her knowledge and experience of raw, uncensored childbirth and spend time in an environment unlike any other she has experienced, that has driven her decision to go to The Gambia.

Planning began in January 2008, with Pamela undertaking a preparatory trip to The Gambia where she visited an urban freestanding maternity clinic. With only six beds in three cubicles, two midwives and no doors (so no privacy) and up to 36 births a day, women often delivered on the floor without the woman-centered care, consent and informed choice we take for granted (RCM 2001, NMC 2008). Despite having lived in The Gambia previously, this was a real eye-opener for both of us, and drove our determination to experience more of The Gambia’s maternity provision.

A year and a half on, we have both developed greatly in our experience and knowledge as midwives, and between studying and placement we have gratefully received donations of gestation wheels, a sonic aid, neonatal and maternal airways and aprons and MIDIRS have donated pinards, pens and copies of journals to donate to the hospitals, clinics and midwives we plan to visit. We have secured placements at AFRICMED, a private clinic, after our previous placement at The Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital unfortunately fell through. We also decided to raise funds for two charities that have stood out in particular to us. GETSuk are a UK registered charity that works on the philosophy of ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life’. With this mindset GETSuk have built schools and libraries and sponsored children’s education, among many other ventures. The other is a Gambian based charity run by the First Lady. Operation Save-a-Baby is dedicated to making equipment available for premature and unwell newborns, which they would not previously have had access to in The Gambia, for example through their recent provision of five incubators to The Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital.

We fly to The Gambia on the 3rd of July and hope that our elective placement will broaden our perspectives and give us an opportunity to observe how maternity services work in a developing country. We intend to keep a journal of our time in The Gambia for us to reflect upon, and to share our experiences with you on our return. If you would like to learn more about our trip, you can follow our blog and leave a message for us at http://projectgambia2009.wordpress.com

Just as we were ready to submit this article we learned the RCOG’s Well Being of Women Foundation has awarded us one of only ten £1000 bursaries to help cover the cost of our elective. We are both incredibly pleased and grateful to have been awarded this, as money is always an issue in planning a trip such as this.

Links

Liverpool John Moores University

References

• Liverpool John Moores University



• Nursing and Midwifery Council (2008). The Code: standards of conduct, performance and ethics for nurses and midwives. London: NMC.
  http://www.nmc-uk.org/aArticle.aspx?ArticleID=3056



• Royal College of Midwives (2001). Woman-centred care. London: RCM.
  
  http://www.rcm.org.uk/EasySiteWeb/GatewayLink.aspx?alId=12775

Ashley Pedersen and Pamela Brodie | Third year Midwifery Students | Liverpool John Moores University

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