Clinical nurse at Maleny Hospital, Bernice McLennan is packing her bags - all 60 of them – and is about to head off to the Philippines where she will be part of a surgical team whose chosen mission is to repair the lips and palates of poor Filipino children. Bernice spoke with HT editor Michael Berry before she left for Manila.
THIS IS Bernice’s twelfth trip to isolated parts of the Philippines where transport is scarce and medical care is even scarcer. She is the secretary and mission manager for Helping Children Smile Inc - a Sunshine Coast voluntary organisation that provides free reconstructive surgery for Filipino children who otherwise would have no access to specialist surgery.
“There’s 13 of us in the team”, says Bernice. “Anaesthetists, surgeons and nurses. My role is team manager for the upcoming mission. I don’t go into the theatres, but if I am needed I do recovery or the ward round.”
Bernice organises the team’s departure from Brisbane – about 800 kg of equipment, kindly loaded free onto the aircraft by Qantas. The team takes everything they need says Bernice because the small Luzon towns they’ll visit have primitive conditions, and hospitals provide the barest of essentials.
“We take everything with us”, adds Bernice, “from the cotton wool balls to the anaesthetic machines, suction units, defibrillators. We get good support from companies loaning equipment and other essentials. We go for two weeks. We fly out on a Saturday. We screen on the Sunday, start operating on Monday and go right through,
depending on the numbers of children. We usually have the Sunday off mid way through, because we are knackered by then”, she laughs.
The surgical team operates for up to nine days of the two weeks away, and they can deal with up to 90 children over that period – some are simple lip operations, others are more complex lip and palate reconstructions. The results of these 1-3 hour operations are not only physically life- transforming, but they turn around the social lives and health status of the children and their families.
“Sadly, if the children don’t have reconstructive surgery they are ostracised”, says Bernice, “and very often the parents are also ostracised because they are considered to have sinned at some time. They believe that God is paying them back with this awful infliction on their children. But once we repair the lips and palates of the children, they can go out to work and augment the family income, which of course helps to support their parents and grandparents”, says Bernice.
The team operates on children as young as four months and it is the young ones who get the most benefit because their speech has not yet formed.
“We did a little girl of six”, says Bernice remembering with a smile, “and her lip was so badly deformed she couldn’t speak. But her first word after the surgery was ‘Mum’. We’ve also done cosmetic surgery on older people”, adds Bernice. “We had a street vendor who had a terrible mouth deformity. He was just selling corn or whatever he could find to sell on the sidewalk. We operated on him the first day we were there. Four days later he was back on the sidewalk. He came and saw us on the day we left and told us that his income had doubled, and that was purely because of his improved appearance.”
Bernice explains that no-one really knows why there is such a high incidence of cleft palate in the Philippines. It’s thought the cause may be poor dietary intake in the first six weeks following conception when the facial muscles are formed, but that’s not conclusive.
There’s never a shortage of children turning up when the surgical team arrives – usually at a small government hospital. Host hospitals offer the team free use of their operating theatre, recovery and ward beds.
“Ahead of our arrival we usually contact social workers”, says Bernice. “They go out to the communities and churches to spread the word that we’re on our way. Many times they don’t believe we’re coming until we’re there, because they’ve been let down by other organisations in the past. They also construct banners across the main street of each town and do radio messages for those who have radios. But a lot of it is just word of mouth. We’ve seen children in supermarkets and told them what we’re doing and they’ve come along for the surgery.”
Bernice says the two weeks away in the Philippines is very busy and there’s not much time for the team to let their hair down. “But we do have a lot of karaoke and dancing at night, if we’ve got the energy”, she adds with a smile.
The team receives no Australian or Philippine government funding. Fundraising alone has helped restore the smiles of over 600 children in the Philippines since their first mission in 1997 under the name of Helping Children Smile Inc.
With her typical sense of humour, Bernice McLennan says she and husband John occupied a penthouse at 50 Maple Street, Maleny for the first 18 years that they lived on the Hinterland. John was ambulance superintendent until his retirement in the early 1990s. Bernice’s life has always been nursing. She commenced training at 16 and only now says that every day is closer to retirement. She has been a clinical nurse at Maleny Hospital since 1975 and experienced big changes in her profession.
“Once upon a time when a patient walked through that door of the hospital we seemed to relieve them of almost all of their independence; and not always did we clearly discuss management plans with them . Now we like to include patients in their care and make sure they are happy with how we’re managing their illness. Maleny Hospital is a community hospital. We nurture ownership of that hospital and we ask the community to comment on our practices and how we can improve our services.
“There used to be a large gap in the relationship between medical and nursing staff in years gone by. These days there’s a better relationship because we all work together as a team more closely than we ever did in the past - we simply have to, to get better outcomes.”
Having been a Maleny resident and a nurse at its hospital for so many years Bernice McLennan finds it increasingly difficult to see locals she knows come into the hospital, and perhaps later, come to the end of their journey through life.
“When you’ve known them for a long, long time and know how they’ve contributed to the community and to their families, I must say, sometimes it makes you think you’ve been here too long.”
And every day is getting closer to the end of Bernice’s professional career, she concludes with her infectious laughter.
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