The second week at the clinic was busier than the first and a bit more eventful. Instead of having seven to 14 patients each day, we had 14 to 27. It was a lot more difficult to triage the patients quickly enough. The doctors would often find themselves waiting for me to triage before they could see a patient. With three doctors working at once, it’s hard to keep up with them. There were a few families that needed two or three children seen together, so even if I triaged three of them, one doctor would take them and the other two would have to wait for me to get to the other patients. There were also a lot of young babies which meant that the whole process of taking their weight took longer than that of older children, since babies first have to be undressed to be weighed and then dressed again. (It’s very important that babies be weighed without their clothes on in order to get the most accurate measure.)
We had a few interesting cases, one child with dextrocardia at the beginning of the week (that’s when their heart points towards the right instead of the left side) and at the end of the week another child had dextrocardia and situs inversus, which means that all of their organs are reversed. Although those cases were interesting to hear about, I wasn’t able to see the rare conditions myself since the children showed no external signs. However, there was one child that came in at the end of the week with hydrocephalus. He came to the clinic because he had fallen and had a sore tailbone, but I was still able to see that his head was very large in comparison to the rest of his body. At first I was a bit shocked, but the child was actually so cute and well-behaved that I couldn’t help but think he was adorable!
On Wednesday we had a lunch-and-learn led by Dr. Srinivasan. He gave a very informative presentation on PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support). A few nurses and most of the social service doctors attended it. In Honduras, after students complete medical school, they have to perform social service in high-need communities before they can become fully licensed. Since the social service doctors do not have much hands-on experience, it’s important for them to attend the talks in order to know what to do in certain situations. The PALS presentation was especially useful because when the doctors learn about life support in medical school, there is no special emphasis on pediatrics, and there are indeed some key differences between children and adults. Overall, I’ve already learned a lot during these past two weeks and can’t wait to keep learning more.
Outside of the clinic, I haven’t been doing too much. I’ve started going to the beach in West End in the afternoon for a couple of hours until sunset; I find it’s a really nice place to read a book. I also gave scuba diving another try, but I think it’s fair to say I failed. I was on the boat, all ready to go, but I was too scared to lean back to fall into the water. I was just way too scared to fall backwards! I had a lovely time snorkelling though and have decided that that will be my new hobby. On Saturday, Peggy’s new volunteers arrived, so we all went to the Rotisserie chicken place for dinner. Then on Sunday I went to West Bay with three of the new volunteers. It’s great to have more girls around and we all seem to get along very well.
