Hospital Nuestra Senora de Regla (Bani Provincial Hospitals
Hospital Nuestra Señora de Regla (HNSR) in Baní was where Infante Sano was born, the home of our first employees and initial interventions! HNSR, a provincial hospital drawing a patient population from Bani proper (with an estimated population of 200,000) as well as the surrounding barrios and villages, has over 3,000 births annually. Programming at HNSR in the southwestern province of Peravia began in 2006.
Successes
The hospital has undergone drastic improvements since our partnership began. During the first couple of months of partnership, we worked tirelessly with hospital administrators and community members to identify leaders and agents of change throughout HNSR. We sought to identify individuals within the hospital that would be our “champions of change”, who would act as catalysts of change, wanting to work with people who were both committed to making major changes and had a long-term commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of women and children. We hired a part-time nurse coordinator and a physician who worked exclusively in the maternity ward to lead the charge. With the help of our agents of change, we formed a hospital’s quality improvement committee, which met weekly to address the most pertinent issues facing the hospital. We are ecstatic to report that the committee continues to meet today.
The primary focus of our intervention at HNSR was on training master trainers and staff within the hospital in labor & delivery, immediate newborn care and life-saving techniques such as neonatal resuscitation and maternal hemorrhage. We held over 40 trainings at HNSR, with help from many visiting nurses, physicians and students and were able to train 90% of all relevant staff by the end of our intervention.
In our third year of work at HNSR, several of the most exciting developments came to fruition. In collaboration with International Medical Equipment Collaborative (IMEC), we delivered an estimated $680,000 of essential, technologically appropriate medical equipment including incubators, infant monitors, and new labor beds for a fraction of the estimated cost. This shipment did more than better equip our partner hospital; it catalyzed hospital and regional public health leadership to initiate a complete renovation of the entire hospital, starting with the high‐risk pregnancy area!
With these renovations, trainings and equipment, doctors and nurses are better prepared to handle normal deliveries as well as emergencies. Women now have access to clean safe births and are treated with respect and dignity knowing that their new babies will have a healthy start to life.
Future Plans
We are excited to see how improvements continue at NSR under the local leadership. Key staff at NSR have been trained as master trainers and will continue to improve clinical practices related to vital signs, neonatal resuscitation and labor & delivery, as well as data collection and reporting.
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