First day at clinic

I woke up at 6:15am to get ready for my first official day at the clinic. The journey to the clinic involves walking for 15-20 minutes to the bus stop followed by two 25 minute bus journeys and then a 10-15 minute walk to the clinic.

The clinic is in a place called Sumpango. It’s a small town with about 36 000 inhabitants. The clinic is a free clinic for people who have minor illnesses. It’s basically a GP practice where anyone can attend – but they have to wait to be seen. The clinic consists of various parts – two rooms to see doctors, a birthing area, recovery area, vaccination area and pharmacy. The pharmacy gives out medication prescribed by the doctors free of charge – if they have the medication.

I was one of three “foreigners” there helping. The other two were from USA and were undergraduate students. They had already been there for one week and had one week left.

For some reason the clinic was quieter than usual. I initially went to the triage area – where we saw all the patients and for the children, we measured their weight and height; for the adults, we measured their weight and blood pressure. We asked all the patients if they had a cough and if so, for how long. They then went back outside to the waiting room until they were called in by the doctors.

It was very straight forward and as there weren’t that many people there, we had triaged most patients by 9am. We then went to the Pharmacy, but there wasn’t that much that we could do there. There was already a pharmacist dispensing the medication and so we just stood and watched for a while. We tried to go to the vaccine area but strangely there were only very few people there too.

The man who took us the previous day arrived at about 11:00 and was asking how it was all going. He noted how it was a bit quiet and also suggested that it would be useful for me to go to the elderly care centre – a place where the elderly are looked after by nurses, but doctors rarely go. He said that they need a doctor there but there isn’t any doctor who goes there. He suggested that I go with him there as he can translate for me and I can help there. He said that he would ask if it was ok for him to take me there on Friday.

At midday we came back to Antigua. I went to my homestay for lunch and then rested until it was time for my Spanish class. It was a good class and we started to learn about medical vocabulary which will be useful for my time here. The view from the classroom is beautiful. The nearby mountain can be seen through the door and trees nearby...

In the evening, I had dinner and then walked around town a little. It seemed pretty safe to me – and the streets are generally lit up so there aren’t any areas where it is very dark. There’s also a common police presence throughout the town which is often seen as a comfort to the large number of tourists in the town.