Tuesday, March 16th
Today was the first day at the clinic, so we all loaded into
the bus and had a cozy two and a half hour ride to the small community. It was amazing to see all the people that
showed up to get healthcare. The lines
were so long and everyone was patient as they waited outside in the 90 degree
weather and the burning hot sun. Even
though many of them had to wait all day, they were willing to do that in order
to see the doctor. It was nice to see
that they all did this without complaining.
In America, if people have to wait more than a few minutes for their
prescription, they get angry and threaten to transfer pharmacies. This just reminds me of how lucky we are here
and that we should not complain, but rather we should remember that it could
always be worse.
In the morning, I helped out in the pharmacy. There were many things similar to pharmacies in
the states, but there were also many differences. Since the pharmacy travels, all of the
medications were packed into suitcases and organized according to classes. When a prescription came in we would grab a
basket for each family and gather the medications. Then we wrote the name of each person on a
plastic garbage bag and Eda, the Honduran pharmacist would check the
prescriptions and bag them up. After the
medications were ready we would take them over to the charla area where we
would attempt to counsel the patients using our best Spanish. It was frustrating because there was many
things I would want to tell them about the medications, but didn’t know how to
say it.
Working in the pharmacy was challenging because we had a
limited number of drugs. Also most of
the labels were hand written and not very specific. For example, most of the medications were
labeled take one tablet by mouth once a day.
If the patient was supposed to take two tablets we would have to cross
off one and write in two. Because of the
limited number of meditations in the pharmacy, the physicians were limited to
only a few choices. When a doctor wrote
for a medication that we didn’t have, we could automatically change it to a
medication that was equivalent without contacting the doctor. It was nice not having to worry about taking
the time to contact the doctor.
In the afternoon, I shadowed Dr. Bzdega, a pediatrician. It was interesting to see the patient
population that came to the clinic. Moms
with lots of children came to Dr. Bzdega.
Many of the symptoms that we treated were cough, cold, headache, and
sore throat. It was interesting because
a lot of the symptoms were not serious and were self-limiting. I think that everyone just wanted to see a
doctor when there was one in town since this might be the only chance for them
to have access to healthcare for the rest of the year.
After dinner we worked on data entry to get all of the
patients into an electronic system.
Before I went to bed, I found a huge spider (not even kidding, it was
the size of my fist!) crawling near my bed.
We didn’t catch the little shit, so I am terrified to sleep. Wish me luck!!
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