June 30th, 2010
The village of Zarzal: the drive was roughly 1.5 hours. Global Brigades visits this village close to four times a year so the population there is pretty familiar with the program. Lucky for us, the village already had a small clinic building that we used it to set up our stations.
(This is a picture of one of the young girls carrying her baby sister to visit the health clinic)
Today was the first day of our Global brigade in Honduras! Exciting? YES. Was I nervous ? Heck yeah. I don’t know any Spanish! It’s time like these that I wish I took Spanish in high school and college. I am so glad that three other students, Jessica , Dave, and Andrew will be joining us for the brigades. Jess is about to start her first year of medical school at Tufts and Dave and Andrew are going to be 2nd years at Loyola. All three are fluent in Spanish too so this tremendously helps out our group. We set up shop in a village called Zarzal. What was one of the most exciting things about today was implementing the new concept of an inter-professional Brigade: medical, dental, pharmacy in one. It’s funny how Western University is always the first to pilot something like this and it is very fitting that Global Brigades wanted to try it with us. The new plan consists of staying treating the village for two days: first day is for mothers and children and the second day is for everyone else.
Here is how it works:
1. Patients come in and their information and demographics are collected by a volunteer community nurse. Some families from neighboring villages WALKED over 2 hours just to see us.
2. Patients are lined up and their information is collected by students in the “in-take” station
3. Patients line up for the triage where vitals and chief complaints are recorded. From here, patients are either directed first to the clinic, the dental station, or the women’s clinic (GYN). All patients get the opportunity of doing all 3 eventually if they choose to.
Picture of the Triage Line
Fluoride treatment dental station for children
4. At the end, they are directed to the pharmacy for any medication pick-ups and instructions
Overall, we probably saw roughly 250 patients today. According to our GB leader, Tom, 250 patients is not a lot compared to the 500 patients that they usually see! However, with this new inter-professional brigade, 250 people allowed us to thoroughly give the patients a dental and medical exam so it was to the patients benefit and ours. However, it still seemed so busy! We were all flooded with people from the early 8:30AM and the last patient left around 4:45PM.
Personal thoughts: I really enjoyed today. Because I did in-takes, I was able to build some rapport with some of the patients, especially the children. Jeanie and I had some down time at the end of the day and we hung out with a beautiful girl named Gladis. She is absolutely darling. I was drawn to Gladis’ smile-she had dimples just like me! She spoke to us only in Spanish but knew a few words in English such as “hello”, “goodbye”, “how are you”, “Hannah Montana”, and “Selena Gomez”. Lucky for us, Gladis didn’t mind our broken Spanish and stuttering. We took a picture together and she was very fond of playing with the camera afterwards, snapping pics of my classmates and such. When speaking to her, we found out that she wanted to be a doctor when she grows up. It was very touching…I know that she will have so much to overcome. But all things are possible. I’ve always believed in encouraging children to pursue their dreams, especially when it won't come easy. You never know. She will be in my prayers tonight.
In take station hanging out with one of our patients, Gladis. She is on the left.
