The Humanity behind Frontline Health Care

November 14, 2017The job is difficult, frustrating, risky —and immensely rewarding. TheFourth Global Forum on Human Resources for Healthbegan with six powerful accounts from the front lines of health care.Please don ’t rape me. Please don’t rape me. Please don’t rape me.This is what was going through Rushaana Gallow ’s mind in 2015 when one of the men who had climbed into her ambulance to rob it put his hand inside her shirt. She and another emergency medical technician had been prepping to take on a patient who was having chest pains in one of Cape Town, South Africa’s “red zones”—areas so dangerous that health workers aren’t permitted to enter without a police escort—when they were attacked.“I’ve been shot at,” Gallow told the audience yesterday during the first day of theFourth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health. “I’ve been assaulted by patients’ families and friends. I’ve ended up with multiple injuries.”Sometimes her friends ask why she keeps going back to a job that ’s so difficult and dangerous, but her response is unwavering.“I have a passion for what I do,” she tells them. “I love it.”The terminology will never capture what it takes to help a mother deliver her baby on the Liberian roadside by the light of a cell phone.  Rushaana was one of six frontline health workers from around the world on stage last night during the forum ’s storytelling session. Each one told us about the moments from their careers that...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news