• Otieno was inspired to join nursing by a nurse in a dispensary in his village when he was in Form 4.
• Nurse Otieno said the pandemic has forced healthcare workers to learn a lot on their feet to save lives. He works at the Siaya County Referral Hospital Isolation Centre.
Image: LAMECK BARAZA
Picture a young nurse thrust into a war against a deadly pandemic with no known cure ravaging the country. He heads a 300-bed Covid-19 isolation centre at a county referral hospital.
He trains medical teams, manages the facility, ensures adequate personnel, drugs and equipment are available to treat Covid patients. He must also make sure the medical teams are protected against the highly infectious virus.
The teams work in two shifts for two weeks and then go into self-isolation for another two weeks. They operate from a hotel. They can’t go straight home after work to avoid possibly infecting their families, in case they had contracted the virus on duty but were asymptomatic.
Nurse Leonard Otieno, 31, takes everything in stride at Siaya County Referral Hospital. He is separated from his wife and daughter, aged three-and-half, and from his friends.
What keeps him going is his dedication to serving patients. And he is proud of it.
“My role is to ensure everything runs smoothly: the nurses are on duty - medical officers, clinical officers and other staff - and that the prevention measures are in place,” Otieno told the Star.
Besides the 300-bed centre at the referral hospital, Siaya has another Covid-19 treatment unit with 200 beds in Bondo County Hospital and a third in Ambira Hospital.
“We make sure the PPE we are using are of good quality. We have a quality control officer who checks the PPE we use in the isolation centre,” he said.
When the coronavirus outbreak was reported in Kenya in March, Otieno was among the first health workers to be trained by the government in collaboration with partners as Covid-19 trainers of trainers in Nairobi.
“When I came back to Siaya, I was to train nurses in other counties but we saw that our county needed the information to prepare for the pandemic,” Otieno said.
He and other team members started training healthcare workers in the county.
"We got our first case in May and I started working in quarantine. The person had died elsewhere. We made sure the suspected contact persons were in a good place, that they were getting what they required and we were counselling them.”
"From the quarantine, we got a case and I took the patient to the Bondo Covid-19 isolation centre.”
Nurse Otieno said the pandemic has forced healthcare workers to learn a lot on their feet to save lives and prevent the spread of the virus.
They have to keep abreast of the updates by the Ministry of Health and other agencies such as the World Health Organization.
"I have to read every day. I have to check the websites every day to see if there is any update I can share with our staff.”
“Another pandemic experience is sometimes having to stay far from your family and you need to adjust."
Otieno said he relies on telephone, video calls, chats and social media to stay in touch with his family to avoid exposing them to the risk of infection.
“I really appreciate Safaricom giving us free data bundles to help us communicate within the unit and with the family and other relatives outside,” he said.
Otieno said Siaya County Referral Hospital has excellent arrangements for the staff working in the Covid-19 isolation centre. They are accommodated in a hotel.
“To tell the truth, in Siaya the two isolation centres I have worked in have enough PPE. I always tell our staff that in case you come across any PPE that is not of good quality, just alert us and we will take them back.
"We will not use them. We have support from the county government in supplying quality PPE.”
Nurse Otieno graduated with a diploma in community health nursing from the Kenya Medical Training College Meru in 2016. He started working in Nyadhi dispensary in Alego, Siaya, in 2017.
He joined the Siaya county health department in February and was posted to Bondo County Hospital's maternity section for two months.
After the Covid-19 outbreak, he moved to the county referral hospital.
Since graduation, Otieno has taken short courses in project management, epidemiology, research, leadership and health management and clinical management of gender-based violence.
He said he was inspired to join the profession by a nurse in a dispensary in his village when he was in Form 4.
The nurse in charge of the dispensary, Godfrey Odhiambo, is currently the nursing services manager at Siaya County Referral Hospital.
“He used to involve me in work like cleaning the dispensary and when he went out for health outreach he called me and we would talk to the people. So, when I completed Form 4 we talked and I told him I wanted to do the course he did. He is the one who advised me what to do. I applied and went to Meru KMTC.”
Otieno says he loves his work. He blogs about nursing at https://oduorotieno.wordpress.com.
“Most people associate nursing with women. That is why I love my name Nurse Otieno. I wanted to show people that men can also excel as nurses.”
