Hi!
My name is Juliet Schutten. Currently busy with my graduation project form the masters Integrated Product Design. For my thesis, I am busy designing a gynaecological training model (GTM) for medical professionals in low-resource settings. At the moment, many nurses and other health care professionals have to perform the procedures for the first time and do their exams on patients, whilst many of the procedures are quite painful, leaving no room for erros. With the GTM, I am aiming to design a low costs and portable model, that can allow the medical professionals to practice their practical skills first, before having to perform the procedures on a patient. I visited Kisumu in Kenia to test the current design with 20 medical professionals. The goal it to improve the design with their input and see how the GTM can be incorporated into their education!
The trip lasted a total of four weeks. It has been very insightful and productive. Speaking with a range of medical professionals and learning about their needs has been invaluable. Testing the design in its actual context highlighted its importance and showed how it can be incorporated into their training. It was very interesting to visit multiple hospitals and see the differences compared to the Netherlands.
This experience also provided useful insights into how the design can be improved to support different procedures, such as a paracervical block, manual vacuum aspiration, the placing and removing of an IUD, LEEP and cervical cancer screening, better in the future. I was able to make some adjustments during my time here, which enhanced its functionality right away. It was also very fun to show how the design was made on the 3D printer to the different hospital staff, as they had not seen one before and were super interested in it.
