Albania
A Day in the Life: Rexhina
How amazing would it be to know you’re transforming lives every minute of the working day? Well we know some amazing BMS World Mission-supported workers for whom this is their daily reality! In our new ‘A Day in the Life’ series, we hear from BMS-supported physiotherapist Rexhina about her typical day serving at BMS’s partner Tek Ura in Tirana, Albania.
7 am
My day starts at 7 am, when I get up and prepare for the day ahead. It’s a short drive to the [BMS World Mission-supported] Tek Ura centre in Tirana, Albania’s capital city, but with a lot of traffic, so I normally arrive before 9 am to prepare for my first patient. At Tek Ura, things are always busy, often with other groups already happening in the main hall, so it’s good to get ahead of the game!
8 am
We have a physiotherapy intern at Tek Ura and she starts at 8 am, so I often spend time reviewing the patients she has seen and discussing any plans. We then may see a child with a neurological condition together, as we often work together when seeing children with disabilities. Our approach is to enable the children to be more independent, and so we may work on their sitting position, practice rolling and use the standing frame to encourage a good standing posture. We always involve the whole family in therapy and so we give advice for the patient at home and practical support too.
At Tek Ura, we place a lot of value on everyone being included in our services, so most days I have a home visit to go and see a patient locally because of their inability to come to our centre. We usually start the therapy at their home until they get better and come and join us at our clinic, helping the person to become more a part of community life.
1 pm
After lunch, I’ll see a sweet older lady with severe back pain who has gradually been able to return to her daily life without a lot of pain. She has now started coming to the older persons activities at Tek Ura, so after her therapy, she goes to have coffee there.
3 pm
Then, it’s the time of the year when we have our health promotion sessions and at the end of the day, I have booked around 30 women from our community to come and have a free cervical cancer screening with a specialist doctor. It is so great to enable marginalised women to access services and to be able to use the Tek Ura centre for this purpose.
When my day ends, it often feels long as it is so varied, but it’s really fulfilling when you see that you are part of a little change in the patient’s life. If you could pray for one thing for me as I continue my work, it would be for the mums of the children we work with to feel included in the society and to fight for their children’s rights.
Why not commit to praying for Rexhina and her work as you go about your working day? You could take a moment to pray when you’re stuck in traffic or making a coffee for a colleague. And you could even go one step further to become a 24:7 Partner and give regularly to support work like Rexhina’s across the world. Click here to find out more!
