First Impressions of Community Service at Lion’s Eye Hospital

Background Information

As I am a fourth-year student, I am entitled to do community service as a course through United States International University (USIU-A). It was a very easy pick for me when I obtained the list of places you could do the community service, I immediately decided that I would be doing it at Lion’s Sight first Eye Hospital (LSEH). The hospital holds a unique place in the community because it is one of the very few hospitals which helps patients with all sorts of problems which may not be solved by general practitioners.

Vision and Mission

The vision of Lions Sightfirst Eye Hospital is to be the leading Eye Hospital in Africa. The mission of LSEH is to dispense with preventable and treatable visual impairment by offering impartial, proficient and thorough patient consideration, locate upgrade and restoration administrations including related chosen specific administrations.

Core Values

• Integrity
• Compassion
• Commitment
• Team Work
• Professionalism
• Openness
• Customer Focus
• Excellence
• Innovation
• Accountability

Board of Management

1. Lion Dr. Manilal Dodhia - Board Chairman
2. Lion Dr. Manoj Shah - Board Vice-Chairman
3. Lion Dr. B. D. Vasisht - Board Secretary
4. Lion Dhirendra K. Shah- Board Treasurer
5. Lion Dr. Michael Kakinda - Technical Advisor
6. Dr. Fayaz Khan - Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
7. Mrs Rizwana Peerbhoy - General Manager

Services Provided

Eye Care Services

• General Out Patient & Executive Clinic
• Vitreo-Retinal Clinic
• Glaucoma Clinic
• Refractive Surgery
• Optical Center
• Low Vision Clinic
• Pediatric Opthalmology
• Orbital Oculoplasty

Dental Unit

The Lions Eye Hospital's Dental Care facility is strategically placed inside the Lions Service Center and offers a full scope of dental administrations for grown-ups and kids. These administrations go from routine dental consideration to the most recent techniques in helpful dentistry.

Hearing Unit

As a major aspect of the Lions SightFirst Eye Hospital, the Lions Hearing Center is prepared to give a balanced way to deal with your hearing medicinal services needs. They take pride in their patient treatment and really appreciate conveying quality consideration to the network.

Eye Bank

Here, they process, store, quality test and issue the ocular tissues for transplant and/or research purposes.

Community Eye Care

The clinic program began in 1997 with two camps.Over the years the medical clinic has contacted an ever increasing number of penniless individuals. The program currently covers a sweep of 250 KMs from Nairobi and acquires more than 5000 patients with the expectation of complimentary medical procedures consistently.

Popat Lions Medical Centre

This department of lions offers general medical conditions at affordable costs. Services include things such as:

• Doctor’s consultation.
• Vaccinations
• Minor surgeries
• Suturing/ dressing
• Burn care management
• Diabetes/hypertensive clinic.

Feelings

The first time I visited Lions Sightfirst Eye Hospital was right after I got the community service letter from Mr. Abdi Hussein which was on 8/01/19. I went to the General manager Mrs. Rizwana direct to confirm if it was possible for me to do community service in the hospital, she approved the request and I was asked to come the following day for orientation. The following day I went for the orientation and I was taken for a tour around the hospital showing each department of the hospital. I was explained about the rules of the hospital and the attire we had to be in for us to do the service. As soon as we were done with the orientation, I was asked about which department I would like to work in. I didn’t mind working in any department as they all sounded interesting. I was then asked if I want to start on the same day or on a later day. I chose to start the coming Monday. Before going home, I was given a volunteer form which had to be filled in and signed in with all the terms and conditions of carrying out the community service at the hospital.

On my first day of the service, when I arrived to the site I was taken to the site supervisor Mr. Bernard who provided me with a dust coat which had to be worn every time and with a name tag. He then took me to the Dental unit as it was the only department which didn’t have any volunteers. I was asked to assist in the reception of the Dental and ENT unit. When I got to the reception, I was introduced to the three receptionists ( Mrs. Sila, Mrs. Amy and Ms. Truphena). They were very welcoming and approachable. I was assigned a seat and was taken through the system of the hospital where they stored all the patients information/ details. The system they use is called Kranium. This system is very easy to learn and it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it. The system stores all the patients activity, appointments, debts or balance. The system can be used to order medicine for the patients from the pharmacy. After going through all the process, the first patient walked in and I was asked to register him and appoint him a dentist available. The patients first have to fill in forms and then we register them on the online system. This is a very tricky part where if I made a mistake, I would have to type in the information all over again. Being the first time handling such things, I was scared but once I got used to it by registering a couple of the patients, I was fine. Once the registration is completed, they are allocated a UHID number which is used every time they visit the hospital. This number is a reference code to the online entry. Then they are allocated to a dentist and billed using the same system. Once I was done registering the patients, I was told to give the forms to the dentists in their rooms. I was asked to handle the registration for the ENT unit as well which is like that of the Dental. The first day came to an end and it was very interesting as I learnt new things about how things are done in a hospital.

I reported to work the following day and continued the same job but every time they saw that I was comfortable with the work I did, they added new tasks for me to do. I was taught on how to give appointments to the patients and how to do the filling of the patients forms. This was a difficult part as any mistake would lead to a major issue in the loosing of a file or allocating a wrong time to the patient, but I made sure that I do it perfectly with the guidance of the other colleagues. They would assist me every time I was stuck in looking for the files and getting it from the right place. It was a very different and yet a very exciting job to do. On the same day, I was asked to translate from English to Hindi for a patient from India who was having difficulties in communicating, me being the only Indian in the department came in hand and it was a very different experience as I had never done this before. The patient was very pleased by what I had done for him and thanked me for that. At that moment I felt the best and felt a sense of achievement.

I continued to work in the same department for the 5 weeks at the reception, I mostly used to register new patients and activate the registration for old patients. but I was assigned with new tasks every week. The following weeks I was told to handle the Insurance forms and applying for the Pre- authorizations. This also included handling the NHIF account and making invoices for the patients. A few patients would only speak Swahili and I am not proficient in it but I took it as a challenge and I made sure that I would learn the basics so that I could speak to them and try to understand what they would like. A few patients walked in who weren’t able to write and I took the opportunity to fill in the forms for them. At that moment I felt like I am giving back to the community by helping them in this. At times I would assist the old age to the doctor’s room.

SWOT Analysis

Strength

• One of the strengths of Lions is that they have very skilled labors and very flexible where one does not just specialize in one thing
• They have invested in high quality and advanced technology which is used everyday
• The hospitals fees are very affordable and where patients are unable to pay, some negotiations are done with the doctor.
• Being an eye hospital, it also provides other services like Dental, Diabetes and ENT
• The hospital has many camps outside which offers free eye check ups
• The Kanubhai Babla Lions Eye Bank is the first eye bank in East and Central Africawhich has access and circulates cornea tissues for donation.

Weakness

• Even though almost all the work is computerized, there is still manual work that is done. This gets a bit hectic on a busy day. Example, writing down the registration of each and every patient in the daily counter book.
• The hospital uses advanced technology, like the system of taking tokens for queuing, this sometimes gets hard to handle as some people are not aware of what to do next and the place gets over crowded.
• The hospitals parking space is not enough for the amount of patients that come in a day. Patients sometimes have to park their cars outside.

Opportunities

• The eye camps they do are free of expense and they do in regions where it isn't produced and where most of the general population can't stand to go for eye checkups. Along these lines they are illuminating the network about them and furthermore about the eyes and treating the same number of individuals as they can.
• Some patients may require to visit the hospital after the free eye check up at the camps for their eye to be treated with the free surgeries offered at the hospital. The hospital doesn’t charge them for the surgeries and provide them with transport to the hospital.
• The hospital could add more services to the medical camps other than just eye check ups.

Threats

The hospital may face competition from the upcoming eye hospital in Westlands

What I expect to do for the site

The experience I am getting at Lions SightFirst Eye Hospital is so unique then what I am used to. I need to work and help in every one of the divisions in order to pick up information and experience. As long as I have been here, I get the opportunity to adapt new things consistently. I would like to help organize the sitting arrangement in the department to reduce the over crowding and also put up signboards to guide the patients on where to go. I would like to help the patients as much as I can to make things easier for both the patients and the hospital.

I'd like to connect with the patients to diminish their pressure and make them feel progressively great while they are at the hospital and learn their culture and share mine with them. I would also really like to speak to the marketing department and IT coordinator in the second half of my community service to address the issues of the slow computers and speak to the marketing manager about the potential that the Dental Unit has and how it can benefit the hospital.