Crossroads clinic was where Noelle and I worked for the nine days of volunteering. Our experience was a lot different than the others’ because we were primarily working in a pharmacy!
One of the first things we did was separate and put away small bags of medicine. For people with chronic illnesses, the hospital will pre-package their medicine and send it to the pharmacy so all they have to do is come on the correct day to pick it up. If the patient does not pick up their medicine within ten days, the pharmacy will open the package and use that medicine for other people. Noelle and I separated hundreds of packages (there were at least fifteen boxes full of them) and ended up with over seventy-five different kinds of medication to put away.
Many days we would put labels on the new shipments of medicine they got in. The stickers made the directions a lot easier for the patients to understand. They had three little boxes on them so the pharmacist could write in the number of pills they needed to take in the morning, afternoon, and at night.
Another task we did a lot was putting pills from bigger bottles into smaller bags with the correct dosage they would actually give out to patients. For example, one medicine came in a package of 58, but a patient would only need 14. I would write on the bag the quantity, name, and weight of each medicine as well as the batch number and expiration (or ‘expiry’ as they called it) date, and Noelle would count out the correct number of pills to go in the bag. Working together made it go by a lot smoother and faster, and it also allowed us to talk a lot and get to know each other. We had a lot of fun AND got so good at doing our jobs that the other people who worked in the pharmacy had to try to find new things for us to do all the time! They were all extremely nice and welcoming and it was fun getting to know them a little bit. They even taught us a little bit of Xhosa!
On a couple of the days we had the opportunity to go into other areas of the clinic and observe. I sat in on vaccinations for a couple of hours and then Noelle and I both were able to observe in pediatrics. It was very interesting to see and compare to what a doctor’s appointment is typically like in the United States. We were also glad to get to spend a little bit of time with the patients… especially the children. =)
It was really cool to see a little bit of the public health system in South Africa and I really enjoyed my time working at the clinic. I hope that some day I’ll be able to go back and say hi (or ‘moloweni’) to all of my friends at Crossroads!
