Our Frontline Worker of the week is… Midwife/COVID-19 field worker, Dianne Sandy

Sep 12, 2021 News

“I would like to say that the vaccines are safe and persons should come on board and protect themselves and family. Vaccines have always been there; vaccines have always helped with other diseases like polio and stuff like that. Without vaccines, many more might have been dead.”

By Romario Blair

Kaieteur News – The acquisition of knowledge has been a key factor in the fight against COVID-19 and Dianne Sandy, a midwife at the Anna Regina Health Centre in Region Two, is fully aware of this. The health worker, who currently functions as a COVID-19 field worker, said that she has personally experienced how properly applied information can change the delivery of health care.

Dianne Sandy, our featured Frontline Worker

The 52-year-old, during a recent interview said, “I’ve learnt that an effective way of delivering health care is letting my patients understand why they’re being treated; it’s important to listen to the patient. If they object, I say okay, take some time, think about it and we’ll get back to you.” This tactic, Sandy said, has yielded great results during her decades of service.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS
Sandy, who has been in the medical field for over 30 years, told Kaieteur News that her career began in the year 1990 when she was just a Community Health Worker (CHW) in the small Indigenous community of Mainstay. While she described her work as “enjoyable,” she noted that, there was quite a number of challenges that persisted for several years.
According to Sandy, “It was exhausting because as a Community Health Worker during those years, I worked alone. I offered my services to Lima Sands, Mainstay. Some days, I even went to Windsor Castle and Anna Regina. During the year 2000, I moved to St. Denise, Tapakuma, another community that was in great need of medical services.”
Sandy said that despite all the challenges, her love for her career deepened, so much so that in 2004 she commenced a three-year training programme in midwifery. After training in Georgetown, she returned to the Mainstay community with even more skills to offer.

With her children

According to Sandy, she decided to pursue midwifery because that level of care was lacking in the remote communities. “I love caring for people, I’ve been doing midwifery before I became a midwife; I was doing deliveries and I always loved nursing. But in addition to that, transportation cost for persons coming out of those areas to Suddie was very high, especially if you have a medical emergency in the night,” she revealed
With training in this regard, she noted, it became clear that “I would know more in depth how to handle those cases. When persons called, I use to gladly go out and see how much I can help. I enjoyed working there for years in those areas (remote communities).”
Sandy grew up in the Region Two Mainstay community, which is famous for its natural lake. She attended the Anna Regina Primary School before attending the Cotton Field Secondary School. Today, she is the proud mother of two adult children.
She revealed that she always had hopes of becoming a nurse, and had even opted out of the teaching profession in order to satisfy this desire. “After high school, I applied for two jobs. I got through with teaching first; I taught for five years at the Lake Mainstay Primary. But I still had my heart set on nursing, so eventually I applied for nursing, I got through and now here I am,” she said with pride.

In the company of some of her colleagues

Sandy’s love for the nursing profession has always been reflected in her willingness to literally walk the extra mile for the sake of her patients. “During the 1990 to 2004 period, walking was an issue. The distance of walking from my place of work to another location to look at a patient could be very lengthy at times. If someone called you in the night, you had to take a bicycle through the sandy trail…whether night or day, once people needed my help, I had to be there. Sometimes, we had persons come out of the backdam with big lacerations, and as a Community Health Worker, it was my job to control that situation with the little training I had, until they can reach the Suddie Hospital,” she related.

COURAGE TO FACE THE PANDEMIC
When asked about her reaction upon learning that Guyana had recorded its first COVID-19 case back in March of 2020, Sandy said, “my years of experience helped to build my courage…I said to myself, this is another disease in the air, I will have no choice but to cope with it but I will try my best to do what I have to do.”
According to our featured frontline worker, reading in order to gain knowledge played a great role in extinguishing whatever fear she had felt. She said that it was important for her to truly understand COVID-19 as misinformation and misconceptions were and still are quite prevalent. She added, “What I did, I started to think about it, then I did some reading on the WHO [World Health Organization] pages, to understand what it’s like, how it came about and those kinds of things. I wanted to know more about it, because a lot was being said about COVID-19.”
But even reading couldn’t prepare her for the drastic change the pandemic caused to her day-to-day work routine. According to Sandy, she had to adjust to dealing with patients on a whole other level. In fact, she recalled that “some persons were uncomfortable with the masks (and) some people would even throw up when they used them, because remember, we’re dealing with pregnant mothers. But nevertheless, I got the courage to cope.”

COVID-19 SENSITISATION
Earlier this year, Sandy was selected to be a part of the COVID-19 sensitisation programme in her Region. Through this role, she revealed, that she became even more enlightened about the coronavirus causing disease. She said, “We were taught about the symptoms of COVID-19 and what would be expected of us. So, we had to go to the public and share what we know.”
When asked if her new assignment was as she imagined, Sandy boldly said NO! She went on to explain, saying, “When I got out in the field, it was new to everybody, when we try to get information over to some people, yes some people accept and they would ask questions, but some people still believed that there was no COVID, and some would even use derogatory words and walk way.”
Sandy revealed that as a health care provider, understanding a patient’s views and reactions can significantly determine whether or not they accept treatment. “When you look at someone, you try to understand the person, don’t go straight into the COVID-19 lecture…try to understand how they think, listen to what they have to say and how they feel about it. Then we explain this is how it works, this is how it happens, this is what we expect of you, if somebody don’t want to listen, we just smile and say it’s okay; we never argue with them,” she said.
According to Sandy, her own mother was among those who decided not to be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, after she was provided with sufficient information, she took it. “Some people are concerned about the vaccine. They have questions and concerns, especially as it relates to how we got the vaccine so fast. We had to explain that this is not the first time that COVID-19 is in the air; this is another strain of SARS… I had to talk to my mom because she never wanted the vaccine.”
Today, Sandy is among the health workers who are stanchly advocating for vaccine update to help beat the pandemic in order to make the world as safer place. “I would like to say that the vaccines are safe, and persons should come on board and protect themselves and family. Vaccines have always been there; vaccines have always helped with other diseases like polio and stuff like that. Without vaccines, many more might have been dead,” she quipped.