Name: Venance Sayi Kahindi
Nursing education: I have a bachelor degree in nursing (BScN) from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Tanzania
Number of years in the nursing field: 4 years
Current title: Coordinator of clinical simulation at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS)
Country of Origin: Tanzania
1) Why did you decide to become a nurse? Caring of the people was inborn character from childhood, I like caring for people, so during my secondary studies I decided to take science subjects as the pass way to my career, because in my country if someone wants to pursue health care profession courses must take science subjects during his/her secondary studies as a foundation. After I completed my secondary school with high pass marks I was enrolled in the best university of health sciences where I did my first degree in Nursing. I had four years of studies at Muhimbili University of health and allied sciences and one year of internship at Muhimbili Nation Hospital, the total of 5years made me more passionate in caring for patients/clients.
2) How did you become involved as a nursing faculty? After my studies I was employed by the MUHAS Academic Medical Center as a nurse in the Medical Intensive Care Unit, I developed more interest in mentoring young professionals in nursing career such as students and newly employed nurses especially in the part of competences (skills) to improve the quality of care in the ICU, through my passions in nursing care and my efforts in helping students, MUHAS employed me as a simulation lab coordinator as a faculty member of staff so that I can help students to acquire knowledge and skills before they practice to the real patients as MUHAS envisioned to strengthen simulation based practice as a teaching and learning strategy in nursing education.
3) How many years were you a nurse before you became involved in academia? I worked as a nurse at Muhimbili national hospital during my internship for one year, then I volunteered for 6 months at this hospital before I was employed at MUHAS Academic Medical Center in the medical intensive care unit where I worked for 1year and 5 months, there after I joined in academia, making a total of 3 years of being a nurse.
4) What is the most challenging part of being a nurse in your opinion? The most challenging part of being a nurse is emotional stress when the patient die and you invested much efforts in making sure that he/she recovers to normal health, also blames from the relatives and other staff when the patient die regardless that the patient was in the end of life stage.
5) What is something in nursing, healthcare,and/or global health you are very passionate about? I am very passionate in caring for patients and providing quality care to patients so that to enable them to recover from their illness. In order to provide care nurses and students should have the necessary skills when providing care in a safe way. In order to attain this I really like to excel in simulations in order to make sure that patients health care provision is improved, through clinical simulations student nurses will be able to practice in safe way to patients and hence improving the quality of health provision to the people in the country and global as large, so my passion is to see patients are cared with nurses who are competent in different nursing skills.
6) You will be coming to the US for stimulation training at George Washington University, what do you hope to gain from this experience? Coming to the USA will help to gain knowledge and skills from experts in simulations that will help me to transform nursing education in Tanzania through the use of simulation as the teaching and learning methodology. This experience will enable students to acquire competences and skills in a safe environment before they practice to real patients in the hospital and also this will be the starting point towards MUHAS to become the center of excellence in clinical simulation in Tanzania where other teaching institution will come to learn at MUHAS.
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