VILLAGE CARE: Silverdale nurse Bev Hopper with a baby at a small Cambodian village, where she and a team of five nurses taught basic health hygiene.
NEW ZEALAND has the "most amazing" healthcare, a Silverdale nurse says after her recent teaching trip to Cambodia, and we should stop griping about it.
"We have the most amazing healthcare in the world. After seeing what the people in Cambodia have to go through just to get medical help, I just want New Zealanders to know how very very lucky we are," North Shore Hospital orthopaedic nurse Bev Hopper says.
Ms Hopper was in the North Harbour News August 20 issue after she was selected by the New Zealand Orthopaedic Nurses Association to travel to Cambodia with a team of five nurses to teach "all things orthopaedic" at Sihanouk Hospital, a centre which provides free medical treatment to poor and disadvantaged Cambodians.
Ms Hopper says Cambodians "travel for miles around, sometimes taking days" just to reach Sihanouk Hospital, and wait at the outpatients clinic – a marquee with plastic chairs – for hours before they are seen by a doctor.
"But they waited patiently. They'd wait for the whole day, and when evening comes and a doctor is still not able to see them, they would just sleep on the ground or under a tree, and come back the next day," she says.
"So I just want to tell New Zealanders not to complain when they have to wait hours at the doctor's surgery," she says.
She found teaching a group of student nurses on placement duties at both Sihanouk and International University, a private hospital, an interesting experience.
"Over in International University, we taught students good hand hygiene and gloving and gowning. The students were so intent on learning. It was so much fun with an interpreter, although a 30-minute lecture ended up taking three times as long," she says.
Ms Hopper was later told the students learn their anatomy and physiology in French, have their lectures in English and sit their exams in Khymer.
She and the other five nurses spent two weeks at Sihanouk Hospital before travelling to Siem Reap to teach basic health care in the villages and orphanages.
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