Sooraj Dooba Hain

After returning from Begusarai, we were glad to finally spend a whole five days in Patna (throughout our entire trip, I think that was the longest time we've been in one place). Our day started as it typically would, with us heading to the Jhpiego office in the morning to discuss what we had seen with Dr. Pallavi. I still don't understand how we could meet every day and have almost 2 hours worth of questions each time. But it is truly a testament to Dr. Pallavi's patience and knowledge when she sat with us to clarify all our doubts and provide her perspective.

And then we were off with Mimi to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences to visit the state nodal center. IGIMS is both a school for General Nurse Midwives and BSc nurses and the broadcasting center for the virtual trainings throughout Bihar. While touring the school, we visited the Fundamentals of Nursing lab, library, computer lab, and various classrooms.

We also met with many of the faculty at IGIMS. The perspective they presented was very valuable, as they emphasized the importance of creating models for the fundamentals of nursing. After a long discussion about the birthing models that we're currently being used to teach midwifery skills, we were able to visit the skills lab. By this time, we were pretty much used to seeing the seven stations that broke up the midwifery skills separated by curtains each with their own models. But it is always interesting to contrast the opinions of each center (which believe me, are usually quite different).

In the skills lab, we were able to visualize the complaints the faculty had with each model, ranging from the fact that the models break too easily to the fact that it is hard to assess a student's performance when using the model. It was also useful to hear what the teachers thought were the benefits of each model they had, from the fact that they were specific to a skill or that the models were very anatomically accurate.

After a quick lunch in the doctors only room at the hospital canteen (I guess we all looked like doctors and got invited in), we returned to watch a virtual training session. Turns out the session we were watching was taught by the same tutor who had taught the session we watched from NMCH on Monday. Well, it actually turns out that there is only one tutor officially running all the virtual trainings until another one can be hired. After her lecture about essential newborn care, we watched a review demonstration of the third stage of labour from the IGIMS skills lab, that was also broadcast to all the other schools.

Broadcasting Center for Virtual Trainings

Skill Demonstration for Virtual Training

After talking to the principal and understanding her opinions on the skills lab and midwifery education for the students, we decided to call it a day. Turns out the sun has basically set and we hadn't realized it until we stepped out of the school. We made our way back to the hotel in the Patna traffic, blasting Bollywood music and trying to sort through information for our presentation on Tuesday (or at least we tried to).

Song of the day: Sooraj Dooba Hain from the movie Roy
Even though I've heard the song before, for some reason, this is the time it got stuck in my (and everyone else's) head. Which you can easily tell whenever there's a silence and someone (Ramji) starts humming the song.