Trainee doctors show community first aid
A GROUP of fourth-year University of Cape Town (UCT) medical students are helping to empower Mitchells Plain residents by teaching them basic firstaid skills and are themselves benefiting from the experience as they learn the essentials of community-oriented primary care.
The group, including students Nabeelah Gani and Josh Fieggen, recently drew a wide range of participants when they conducted a daylong workshop in the Westridge civic centre.
Fieggen said: “We met with the community members to find out what their concerns were. There were some common medical challenges, including asthma and epilepsy, and then trauma, because there’s a lot of violence in the community.”
The group then set to work to create a programme for the workshop that focused on asthma, epilepsy, choking, burns, broken bones, bites and bleeding, while also touching on the subjects of advocacy and policy change.
“We had mostly community health workers and members of the Chronic Club, a group for people who suffer from lifestyle diseases, attending the workshop, but we also had some who had found our Facebook page, along with members of a local gym and preschool,” said Gani.
The workshop was used to help residents understand best practice in first aid, and to teach them some basic skills to ensure they don’t cause any further harm when helping someone in need.
The students also found that clearing up a few myths was probably the most rewarding part of the workshop. Many of the people who attended believed that when someone’s having a seizure, they should put something in their mouths – which is not the best idea.
To help people remember the skills they had learnt, Fieggen and Gani’s group created instructional flyers and handed them out on the day. The information has been added to their Facebook page as an additional resource.