Tuesday 28/11/2017
This morning I had the chance to teach information literacy skills to the staff and students at SZRECC. I spoke about free resources (such as Pubmed, TRIP, Hinari, NICE) that are available online to support evidence based practice. I then encouraged students and staff to fill out literature request forms which I could then take back to the library to teach Zainaba how to access information online. Gwyn in his following lecture kept referring back to the importance of being able to access information to answer clinical questions, which really helped to reinforce the message we wanted to put across.
After the teaching session we headed into Banjul for a busy morning of meetings. We first went to meet the Honourable Minister for Health. Amadou and Stella were able to tell her all about the Swansea- Gambia Vision 2020 Link and the Minister expressed her thanks for the good work that the Link is doing. Stella asked for permission to write up a Memorandum of Understanding that she could sign next year to cement our relationship with the new government. Gwyn also told the her about our plans to establish a diabetic retinopathy screening service in The Gambia and the Minister seemed very supportive of this.
Next we visited the Standard Charter Bank in Banjul to meet with the Seeing is Believing Team. They were instrumental in financing the initial building of SZRECC. Again, Amadou and Stella gave a good overview of the Link and the work we hoped to achieve in the future. Once Gwyn had explained his idea for a diabetic retinopathy-screening programme a worried member of the Seeing is Believing Team actually asked Gwyn if she herself could come for a screening as she is a diabetic and had never been screened. So this really served to illustrate the need for such a programme in The Gambia.
We then returned back to SZRECC for the afternoon. Gwyn and Stella headed over to theatre while I returned to the library to meet Zainaba. We went through the library inbox and discovered that we had received an institutional login to Hinari. This really made our afternoon and we looked through the database together as this was the first time that either of us had used it. We then put up promotional materials throughout the library and the rest of the hospital to encourage the students and clinicians to use it.