Dedicated burns staff from Morriston Hospital’s Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery have been using their spare time to pass on vital skills and expertise more than 5,000 miles away in Bangladesh.
The nurses, who volunteer with Interburns – the International Network for Training Education and Research in Burns – not only helped draw up a five-day course in advanced burn care, they also flew out to Dhaka to deliver it.
Staff nurse Dominque Potokar, whose husband Tom is one of the network’s founders, was joined by Sarah Reavenall, manager of Powys Ward for the trip.
Their colleague, Danni Mehrez, who works as a staff nurse in the burns dressing clinic, was also heavily involved in preparing the content.
Interburns was set up in 2006 to train doctors and clinicians in poorer countries to treat burns and help provide education on ways of preventing them.
Dominique said, ‘Interburns has grown and we have got more people involved. Initially we were just teaching essential burn care but last year we developed a more advanced course and we then decided we wanted to create a course aimed at nurses.’
Working with other Interburns colleagues, they devised the five-day programme which emphasised practical work and hands-on learning and Dominque and Sarah flew out to Bangladesh earlier this month to lead it.
They were joined at Dhaka’s National Institute for Burns and Plastic Surgery by volunteers from Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Ethiopia, Scotland and Nepal who passed on their skills to 32 burns nurses who had travelled from all over Bangladesh and from as far away as West Bank in Palestine to learn more.
Now they have returned to Swansea both nurses are determined to continue fundraising and promoting the work of Interburns.
Dominque added, ‘People here, patients and staff, have no idea how lucky they are and these trips are a good eye-opener. When you see what we have we have no excuse not be excellent.’
To support the charity’s work, visit www.interburns.org.
