The Nursing & Midwifery Education program at Maluk Timor has been busily preparing for their first training program that is soon to be delivered at Vera Cruz Community Health Centre (CHC). Late last year, the Nursing & Midwifery team met with the heads of the CHC’s and the department of post-vocational education for health professionals (INS), to discuss what ares of education Maluk Timor could assist with.
The outcome of those meetings was a need for further training on Basic Life Support and Emergency Care. With our new found heading, the team started learning and preparing the BLS module to be delivered to the Vera Cruz staff. There was just one problem, how do you teach BLS without manikins? Our team had been borrowing the manikins of another very gracious NGO at the National Hospital, but it was very apparent that long term, we would need our own.
Unfortunately, professional manikins used for teaching CPR are not something available in Timor Leste, and the ones back home are quite expensive. With this in mind, I reached out to a friend who has seen me grow up for the past 20+ years, and has been in the business of teaching CPR for many years now in Brisbane.
My email to Rod was simple ‘do you know where I can buy CPR manikins that won’t cost the earth?.’ To this his reply was ‘leave it with me’.
When he got back to me a few days later asking for the address where he could send the manikins, I assumed he had some second hand ones we could use. Little did I know, that he & his wife had graciously decided to order and pay themselves for brand new ones for our program!
They are pretty fancy and have lights to indicate good technique!
A huge thank you to Rod & Lyn Kunde who have donated these amazing electronic CPR manikins; they will be/ and have already been a huge asset to our team and the BLS module that we hope to teach in the near future.
Our BLS module will run over 8 weeks and will cover anatomy & physiology of the cardiopulmonary systems, DRSABC, and several emergency scenario’s which are commonly seen in Timor Leste.