The new doctors, Dr. Gross & Dr. Papa. (abrv) have arrived to work in the clinic. Because there are now 3 doctors in the clinic, today was extremely busy – we took in around 32 patients. The waiting hall was absolutely crammed with people—whenever I opened the door to call in another patient to triage, a blast of warm, wet air would hit me in the face. About midway through the day, the power went out for around half an hour, leaving the 4 of us to operate in semi-darkness. In sum though, a very successful day. The new doctors are extremely nice and knowledgeable. They have also brought with them some extra medicines and vitamins, which are much appreciated.
As time has passed, I've gotten much better at refining my triage skills and also at administering fever medications. I'm also able to understand patients requests and explanations much better. Dr. Gross has even asked me to translate for him a few times, which makes me feel my communication skills have improved to some degree. Dra. Prado has also been great at explaining the various diseases and medications that I have questions about. I've been keeping a running tab of the various questions that have come up and am in the midst of creating a cheat-sheet for future interns' reference.
My work at the orphanage has also been coming along nicely. My job is to teach the house's four first graders how to read in Spanish, which has proved to be a daunting task. It's hard to explain why "me" sounds differently in English and Spanish and the children are easily frustrated. I've mostly been concentrating on getting them to sound out letters and figure out consonant combinations. In the end though, I feel like progress is being made. They're slowly improving and are great to play with afterwards.
Lastly, I've found great friendship in a few of the other volunteers here on the island. They are interning in Miss Peggy's clinic, which is across the street from where I live. It's definitely nice to spend time with people, especially those who have great medical stories to tell. We've had a few cooking and traveling adventures together, which has made my off-time very worthwhile.
