Sent by Copilot:
In a startling revelation, medical interns in Kenya have reported turning to Google and YouTube to conduct medical operations due to poor supervision and the overwhelming transition from student to practicing professional. This alarming trend has raised serious concerns about the quality of medical internships in the country.
In Summary:
- The quality of medical internships in Kenya is under scrutiny.
- Nearly 5,000 health interns are posted annually in Kenya.
A Desperate Situation
Imagine being a medical intern in your first week at a hospital. Your senior colleagues, who are supposed to guide you, typically leave after midday, leaving you alone with a long list of patients, numerous nursing calls, and a patient scheduled for a caesarean section. Some interns, in their desperation, turn to Google or YouTube for guidance, sometimes with disastrous results.
One intern recounted a harrowing experience: “You go and operate on a patient, you make an incision until you cut intestines, because you don’t know how much pressure to put.”
A Widespread Issue
This is not an isolated incident. Many medical and nursing interns feel like they are thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim. Their experiences were documented in a study conducted in Kenya between 2021 and 2022 by researchers from the Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, University of Oxford, University of Warwick, and King’s College London.
The study, published in the Social Science and Medicine journal, explored the concept of liminality – the uncertainty and transition from training to practicing as health professionals. Researchers interviewed 121 new graduate medical doctors and nurses and conducted seven focus groups.
A Terrifying Transition
Kenyan health trainees must complete a one-year supervised internship before being registered to practice. However, the quality of this internship is now being questioned. One doctor intern described the experience as “confusing” and “terrifying.”
“You are taught about the decisions [as a medical student], but you never really make the decisions. Then, one morning, you wake up and it is like: ‘Daktari (doctor), what do we do? ‘Actually, I was terrified’,” the intern said.
Interns also reported that more experienced health workers paradoxically expected them to perform critical tasks competently without support while simultaneously viewing them as incompetent. “When I came [into internship], I was left with an entire ward on my own, I didn’t even know how to manage it,” said one nursing intern.
A System Under Strain
Kenya posts nearly 5,000 health interns every year. This year, the Ministry of Health posted 4,156 interns across six cadres, including 1,735 doctors, 874 nurses, 506-degree clinical officers, and 1,930 diploma clinical officers.
The first shock for these interns is the reality on the ground. Most medical training hospitals are relatively well-equipped, and interns are trained to make clinical judgments based on evidence. However, during internships, they often lack the necessary resources, equipment, and diagnostics, leading to a reliance on online resources and gut instinct.
The findings of this study highlight the urgent need for better supervision and support for medical interns to ensure they can provide safe and effective care to patients.
