Workshop Assessment, Monkeys and Waterfalls
The first week in Techiman is now over again and there is a lot to report. After we were picked up on Monday afternoon by a very nice driver of the hospital and dropped off at the Guest House of the Holy Family Hospital, we could hardly believe our luck: we have our own rooms with air conditioning, mosquito nets and a private courtyard. And on top of that, a private cook who always cooked us delicious meals in the evenings. From this cozy and private space of peace we draw new energy and started full of motivation into our first day of work. 😉
First we got to know all the technicians, saw the big but chaotic workshop for the first time and had a first meeting with Chris the hospital admin. Here we discussed our approach of the first week. Afterwards we were directly told that the head of the technical department will not be on site during our whole stay. In the eyes of the Ghanaians this is not problem at all, we see it a bit critical when our task is to analyze the workshop system and introduce new work routines. However, we can’t change it anyway, we are just surprised about the way of communication. This brings us directly to the first problem of the Maintenance Department: communication leaves a lot to be desired here in Techiman. This concerns both, the exchange between the technicians and the medical staff, as well as the coordination between the technicians themselves. The latter is also noticeable in the lack of documentation, which means that no one in the workshop has an overview of who has already worked on which device. The third big problem that jumps right out at us is the system in the workshop itself. Broken equipment is lying around everywhere, almost certainly not being repaired, but also not being disposed of. Tools have no consistent storage space and a spare parts warehouse is non-existent. These problems are not difficult for us to see. The troublesome thing now is to make this clear to the technicians as well, to train their own understanding of the problems and to develop new systems that will hopefully make the work easier and more structured.
Because of the rather high level of chaos in the maintenance work, we decided after consulting our back office team to postpone the introduction of the Swift App in Techiman to a next project. While the app would definitely solve problems such as communication and documentation, if a system is not yet in place, the app is so much more work that we fear it would not be used at that time.
Despite this, we are trying to improve the current workflow. For example, relatively early on, we introduce a morning routine where each technician goes around certain departments of the hospital and asks the medical staff about any problems with the technical equipment. This is to promote communication and gives the technicians an overview of the situation of the clinical equipment every day. After that, the tasks are divided among the technicians, as each has his or her own area of expertise.
As our work progresses, we try to gain further insight into the daily work routine by asking many questions, accompanying the technicians in their work and regularly sharing our observations with the technicians. Furthermore, we talk to the carpenter and the caretaker, who is responsible for the construction of the new workshop building. Overall, we get a lot of information, however, it can be quite exhausting sometimes when you have to pull everything out of people’s noses.
At the end of our work week, we meet with Chris again. He is very satisfied with our assessment so far and also gives us the green light for some suggestions for improvement that we are making. We will then start to tackle these on Monday. As a little break between our working days, the hospital organizes a trip to the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary and then to the Kintampo Waterfalls. Equipped with a bag of bananas we dive into the rainforest with a friendly tourgiude and soon have one or the other furry friend on our shoulder. We are enchanted by the Mona monkeys and also a few Black-and-White monkeys show up. We continue to the Kintampo Waterfalls. Here we enjoy a cool bath in front of a great scenery before it starts to rain. We make our way back and work a bit relaxed in bed on our laptops. Tomorrow we will start working again, there is still a lot to do! Greetings and see you soon. 🙂 Yɛbɛhyia bio (=see you soon/we will meet again)
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Text: Katharina Mai