Blog 2

When arriving at the clinic I was not sure what to expect. American hospitals are always clean so I was assuming that the Panamanian hospitals would be clean. When we arrived at the first clinic it was an eye-opener because I have never been to a clinic outside of America. Our group was working at the C.S.S. clinic and it seemed clean but not as clean as American standards. Thinking back about it, it was nicer than the Psychiatric hospital we went to but the C.S.S. hospital was the nicest hospital out of all of them.

The C.S.S. clinic was larger than I thought it would be. There were many different sections for our group to be split up at. I was surprised because I did not think that we would be left in an area where no one spoke English so it was a bit overwhelming at first. After we learned how to say, “I want to learn” in Spanish, the days seemed to be easier. At the clinic they stressed the importance of aspiration and seemed upset because we were wearing white “sport” shoes as they called them. They seemed very particular on things like that but in the same breath they often times didn’t wear gloves while giving injections. In America we are not taught to aspirate and our teachers stress the importance of gloves.

The next hospital our group went to was the Psychiatric hospital. I was surprised that they did not have air conditioning and that the condition of their building was in the shape that it was. It was nice to see that they were building a new hospital right next door. There were 5 patients that shared the same room and bathroom with each other in each room. Although the rooms were large, in America they try not to put that many patients in a room because of the risk of spreading disease. They also did not wear gloves and they did not seem like they did assessments and the nurses did not act like patient advocates.

The last hospital was the C.S.S. hospital. This hospital was the most like American hospitals but even in this hospital they have limited resources. It was interesting to see that the doctors (interns) did a lot of the nurses’ work in the ICU. In America nurses have more of a responsibility and they are more patient advocates. It seemed like the nurses do not spend as much time with the patients in the ICU as they do in America.