Meeting the team

This morning, we had our meetings with the doctors, nurses, and other staff members at MUST. It started out with a large group of people, which Godfrey introduced us to and gave details about the study. Immediately afterward, we sat down around the conference table to go through the questionnaire and make any needed changes. We got to meet the Ugandans with who we would be paired with for the interviews. I’m working with Joy, a nursing student; she’s really humorous, intelligent, speaks great English and seems to know everything about the hospital and how the HIV clinic operates. I’m really glad we’re together.

Afterward, we went on a full tour of the hospital. Every day, I see something new that amazes me yet again. Today, it was the hundreds of people scattered around the hospital in different areas, waiting to be seen by a doctor, to get their meds, for immunizations, and so on… they sat in chairs in tightly packed rooms, on benches in narrow hallways, on the floor, outside, everywhere. Their faces were completely solemn as their stared at us walking by - another indescribable feeling…

Our group is kind of in a predicament. We’re supposed to start working on interviews TOMORROW, which really shocked us because nothing is completely finalized. We revised the questionnaire and have to edit these changes in Word and Access, but there are some functions we don’t know how to do and we haven’t had the Internet access to search how. Thankfully, we met Henry at the library who referred us to Tash, who is in charge of IT… now, we’re up and running on TashNet. Haha. This gives us slow, yet functional, Internet access on the main campus – which is right across the street from us. We’ve only tested it for several minutes, so here’s hoping that it continues to work.

Everything is also disorganized. This isn’t surprising, but it would help if things were a bit more finalized before we plow ahead with research. There’s a ton of issues with the database, available times of Ugandan team members, getting a high number of questionnaires completed every day, and so on. We’ll be working on what we can tonight… thankfully, we have instant coffee and electricity to boil water.

Also – I’ll eventually describe what the research is exactly about. I’m just burnt out at the moment.