Meet Prabha.
August 5, 2015 - The Possible Team
[Read this piece on Medium!]
Meet Possible’s Nurse-In-Charge, Prabha — an energetic person you’ll see running around our hospital, making sure all our patients are receiving high-quality, compassionate care.
Nursing was not what Prabha thought she would study growing up in Dang, a district about 280 km west of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.
She was looking at different options for her education, when her sister-in-law recommended studying to become a nurse. Her sister had wanted to go into nursing herself, so Prabha thought she could follow in her footsteps.
Soon after, Prabha enrolled at Hope International College in Kathmandu, and learned she had a natural knack for medicine. After graduating, she started teaching at a college in Dhangadhi, a city in Far-West Nepal.
“Teaching future nurses was a tough job, but it was also one of the most memorable experiences of my life,” she recalls.
After her stint in Dhangadhi, she moved back to Kathmandu to work as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse at Vayodha Hospital.
“I was restless while working at Vayodha–even though the job was perfect on paper, it didn’t provide that challenge factor I was looking for.”
That’s when she stumbled upon a vacancy for a Nurse-In-Charge at Possible. The position would give her an opportunity to serve patients in one of the most rural regions of Nepal, while helping her polish her leadership and management skills.
That was more than a year ago.
Today, Prabha has 11 Auxiliary Nurse Midwifes (ANM’s) and five staff nurses working under her, and she manages the general workflow of our bustling inpatient and outpatient departments.
Coming to rural Nepal from Kathmandu wasn’t an easy transition. Our hospital hub, Bayalpata, didn’t have a Nurse-In-Charge for quite some time. Because of this, the role required various kinds of improvements all around — from managing employees, keeping wards clean, maintaining surgical equipments, tracking medicines, and reporting.
“Most of my teammates are locals — some have been here as long as the hospital existed! They are very attached to Possible because of this. I was merely a newbie. The challenge was to ensure everyone felt comfortable talking and listening to me. At the same time, I had to make sure they know I respected their work and their contribution this organization.”
Prabha quickly started working on various developments for our medical team. She soon learned that implementing any process in rural Achham is quite different than in Kathmandu, due to factors like lack of resources, technology, and cultural differences.
The solution was to be patient but demanding, communicate regularly, and move one step at time without losing sight of the larger, ultimate goals our team had set.
A Memorable Incident.
Prabha has encountered many different patients, but she still remembers the first hysterectomy case she was a part of last year.
Our patient had lost a lot of blood and was in critical condition. She needed to have surgery, but our hospital didn’t have any blood. Prabha worked extremely fast on her feet, and found a blood type match among our own team.
Dr. Bikash, our Medical Director, successfully led the surgery. The patient and her husband stayed at Bayalpata for almost a month until she recovered fully.
“It was a crazy day and we thought we had lost her. But we brought her back to life.”
So much has changed since the first day Prabha arrived at Possible. Now, our hospital alone receives between 300–400 patients a day, and Prabha’s team is busy making sure all of them are receiving the best of care.
“You are always trying to overcome one challenge after another. Sometimes it feels like it will never end. But then you see a patient leaving the hospital with a bright smile. And then you realize this is all worth it.
This is why I am here.”