How do you know your donations are being used effectively? 🤔
In keeping with our strict commitment to make #everypennycount, we take a rigorous scientific approach 🔬to objectively monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our interventions.
Indeed, our core team includes established academics specialising in global health and rural medicine working in close collaboration with local staff, NGOs, community members and the fantastic leadership at Tintswalo Hospital. By doing so, we ensure a range of perspectives, ideas and systematically collected objective critique 🧐.
For instance, when we successfully implemented Tintswalo's first triage system 🟢🟡🟠🔴 to guide prioritised urgent care, we followed the literature proving unequivocally how this intervention saves lives.
It does. A simple and deeply researched fact.
And then we went further.
We perform regular qualitative and quantitative assessments, surveying the staff and patients to find inefficiencies and best adapt the system to our context.
Here's Mama Selma 👆on our Triage intervention:
“As soon as I arrived, the nurses checked me. They explained that I was lucky to be "a green" and the more serious yellows and reds get seen first. It is fair and I am happy I am not a yellow today!"
For even harder, more objective evidence, we incorporated a monitoring system into the triage forms that allows us to continuously evaluate impact.
So far, it has allowed us to pinpoint (and correct!) several issues. For instance, we noted that patients with aggressive/violent behaviour were not getting triaged.
Aggressive patients need immediate management by our fearlessly respectful security staff, which means that they often bypass the triage system.
However, these patients may be aggressive/violent precisely because they are critically ill and confused. So we have now performed training to ensure that these vulnerable patients are triaged with urgency.
"Many security guards think that violent patients are just drug takers, but they can be very sick. We now inform the triage bay when we have secured the patients so that they can be urgently assessed."
So, this effort to transform Tintswalo Hospital into a Centre of Excellence in Rural Health is not just a hashtag. It is grounded in an objective, evidence-based approach to making and maximising impactful, sustainable and life-saving change.
Tintswalo's first High Care unit is part of that and we are on track to deliver yet again, thanks to your donations! 🥰
We have just stripped the floors of the corridor leading to our new high care units.
And our crack GIRL💋POWER construction team are now laying a the concrete overlay that will ensure our ambulance beds glide in and out with life-saving ease.
I hope this has provided some insight on how your donations are being used to their maximal potential.
ZERO admin costs.
Evidenced-based impact.