Sunday, May 29, 2011

Soloy Clinic

My first day at Soloy clinic was culture shock. The clinic is small and very unclean, with dogs and cats walking in and out of the clinic. There is no water nor electricity in the clinic. For population of 23,000 of patients registered at the clinic there are 3 doctors, 2 nurses and also there are the promoters that go to the community to speak to people about how to clean water, not to drink dirty water, teach them about healthy living and educate about birth control.

I was placed at the ER with doctor, nurse and nursing student. I gave 3 IM injections all of them antibiotics. Doctor disclosed that he prescribes antibiotics to all patients in IM form due to patients forgetting to take medications or loose medications so they don’t take the prescribed dose of antibiotics that are necessary to be completed in full prescribed dose to kill the infection. According to doctor, patients don’t believe in waking up and taking medications on time. During my day at the clinic I observed that Panamanian people don’t talk much even doctor to patient, their conversations are very short and to the point. I also observed a problem with trust. It seemed to me that Panamanians trust their doctors in that way that they don’t even question doctors what are the side effects of the certain medications or what exactly are they for, they just pick medications and take them. I wished there was more teaching involved. Also there is little trust given to us “gringos” at the clinic. My goal is to work my best in next week or so to get their trust and I think I am slowly getting there now that I was there for 3 days. In addition I think that there is hardly anything that can be done as drastic help until we fix the water problem.

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