Africa Calling
The impact you can make
Touching lives, every day.
Touching more lives, every day
Realities are changing at many of South Africa's public and rural hospitals, and the common factor is always the arrival of good people. Raising a hospital from a place of disease and desperation to a functional facility where people come to find treatment and health is without exception dependent on a team of good staff.
All too often, AHP has walked into facilities where one solitary doctor is struggling valiantly, without support, to deal with a crowded outpatients', day after day, only to find the picture transformed, as new staff come on board, to a vibrant hub of meaningful healing work and supportive colleagues – with a busy and varied social life. Invariably, the difference is the people, and this is the kind of impact that your involvement as a health professional can bring. Some of these facilities are now running clinical improvement programmes, spear-headed by the newly recruited health professionals. Initiative is welcomed, and you may just find yourself running some innovative programmatic intervention to improve service delivery!
But over and above the impact on hospitals is the effect that you can have on the lives of thousands of people. As a rural practitioner, you will see many people, every day, with a large variety of medical issues. You may be called upon to deliver dramatic procedures with less than ideal equipment and/or no previous experience. You'll probably be spread quite thin. But all this means is that you'll also learn more, experience more, do more and help more people – every day – than you ever dreamed possible.
And isn't that why you chose this path?
