Medical nurse and specialist in prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS Ritah Nakyanzi said that as a nurse she is drawn to serve the community through getting directly involved with patients.
While being interviewed on The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman, Nakyanzi revealed that she has always been passionate about social work. It is this passion that made her leave a lucrative job where she was working as a bedside nurse, to working as a volunteer in a Non Government Organisation (NGO) where she would work independently and creatively.
“When I was doing bedside nursing, I realised that it wasn't for me because in Uganda even though nurses study different things, the practice is different since nurses work less independently and often look up to the doctor’s instructions. But personally I wanted to get creative and be accountable to my patients so I thought about joining the NGO world to do something different,” she explained.
After working at a women's specialized hospital, Nakyanzi decided to quit her job to volunteer as a nurse in an NGO.
“When I came in as a volunteer, I was excited because these were the things I wanted. I had a chance to get creative, come up with templates and see my performance and work independently. It was so good because my supervisor trained me and later allowed me to work individually.”
She said that though the pay was very low, she held onto it because of the drive she had for impacting communities. Seven months later, I was able to get a permanent job in one of the NGOs in Karamoja sensitizing people about HIV/AIDS and helping pregnant women give birth to HIV free babies.
“I enjoy my work and I am so excited to be a part of the project that does HIV programming. I mainly do prevention of mother to child HIV/AIDs transmission because positive mothers don't have to give birth to HIV positive babies. So we do sensitization on social and reproductive health for youths and pregnant mothers while giving different care packages for the infected and non-infected while providing them with support in their health journey,” Ritah said.
The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman airs every Weekday from 4-5pm on RX Radio.
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