| Emily Schornstein
c/o Cairo Evangelical Medical Center
2, Melligy Str.
Ezbekiah
Cairo, Egypt 11111
Email: Emily Schornstein
Emily ended her term of service on June 14, 2005.
Emily began her second two-year term of service as a long-term
international volunteer in August 2003. She is assigned to the
Cairo Evangelical Medical Center in Cairo, Egypt, in partnership
with the Synod of the Nile.
"The hospital is housed in a building that had been an office
building," writes Emily about her new place of service, "and
not all of the floors have been converted yet. Last spring they
opened their third in-patient floor, which has been full since
I arrived. We have an active outpatient clinic with about ten
different specialties. We also do at least some of the medical
care for the Sudanese refugees."
Emily spent her first two-year term at the Cairo Geriatric Center,
where she taught and supervised the staff in caring for the residents.
This is a model for geriatric care and gave Emily a good idea
of what can be done in Egypt.
"My present job," writes Emily, "involves converting
one of the in-patient floors into a hospice unit for the dependent
and terminally ill. There is a lot of work that needs to be done
to upgrade nursing and cleaning standards, and we also need to
change the thinking of the staff from caring for the physical
needs of short-term patients to providing a home-like environment.
We put more emphasis on meeting the emotional and spiritual needs
of long term residents, getting them out of their rooms and providing
program of activities. We also want to put two residents in a
room instead of the present pattern, which puts a resident in
a room with a member of his family or another companion. That
will add more beds, but will require a change of thinking on the
part of the residents and their families. I think it will take
at least two years to get this underway."
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