Blog 2

I can literally say I pictured a shack of a place where we were going to do our clinicals for the next few weeks.  I thought it would be off some dirt road and people would walk to the clinic from their home.  I pictured it to be dirty with no air conditioning.  I did not think they would have any modern health care supplies, and they would just have like two nurses and a doctor in their clinics.  The picture in my head was very rugged, and nearly the opposite of what the clinics were actually like in real life.  There were many people in the waiting room with many nurses and nursing students in all different rooms.  There was a gynecology room, immunization room, pediatrics room, nebulizing room, along with a room to do mammograms.  While the waiting room did not have air conditioning, many of the specialized rooms were cool.  They pretty much did everything we would do at our doctor’s office, expect for they had to wait much longer to see the doctor.  Additionally, the nurses did not wear gloves when working with patients.  I did my very first immunization at this clinic, and all the nurses were so helpful even when they knew I did not understand much of what they were saying in Spanish.  Another room that I enjoyed at the clinic was the pediatrics room!  We got to hold all of the babies that came through and did everything from weighting and measuring their height to giving them immunizations.  While not having my peds rotation yet, it was definitely a learning experience all on its own.  I really enjoyed working at the clinics as I learned many new things, and was able to see some new and different areas of care that I have not had the chance to see yet.  I was sad when we were leaving the clinic because all the people there had been so friendly to us, but we had the hospital to look forward to the next week.  The hospital I expected to be smaller than the ones at home.  I did not really expect much of it; however, when we got there it was a decent size hospital.  It was very nice inside and out, and not only did they have air conditioning but also hot water.  We were able to go to the operating room, the ICU, and the emergency room.  The operating room looked extremely similar to the ones at home and was actually very nice.  The ICU was small but they too had most of the same equipment that we used at home.  In the emergency room they had many different rooms and stations it was very neat to see.  I was able to put an IV into two patients, and also give a vaccine.  It was definitely very scary at one point when a man came into the ER with pain and a blood pressure of 256/115.  The hospital was a very interesting experience and I was very thankful for some of the faculty at the hospital who spoke English.  This helped when it came to answering questions.  Overall, I have learned so much, and most importantly learned that health care in Panama is not far from what we are doing in the United States.