Clinic...Finally a patient

After being here for what seems like an entire week we had our first clinic today. What is so interesting to me about the clinics here is the fact that the entire process is very reminiscent of the types of clinics that I have in Boston. Basically a big group of nurses travel to a set location in some country side village with a bunch of medical supplies and simply start to see patients. The only difference between here and Roxbury is that all of my patients here speak Spanish and there are no resources for me to connect them to at all.

Prior to the actual first clinic day I questioned the validity of a project like this that truly does not feel sustainable. Is it actually helping the people we are seeing or are we creating more problems? 

After my first day here I have no doubts that I am doing the right thing. We follow the World Health Organization guidelines for caring for individuals in third world countries and some things from my Boston job still ring true even in the DR. Sometimes all people need is a nurse to sit down and listen to all of he problems in their life....even fit he nurse can't fix them. At the end of the day people really just want to know that someone...anyone, even a foreigner who is butchering their language actually gives a shit. It's so simple and so sad that no matter where I go in the world this is a recurring theme. 

We went to two different places today. At the first site indefinitely was getting my bearings, but eventually I got into the swing of things with very little problems. By the time we made it to the second site I was my old Boston van self and patients were opening up to me. An old man actually admitted to me that he was an alcoholic which sounds really stupid but I saw it for what it was, a first....a very important first. 

I also got the chance to go with one of the other nurses to visit a young man, 25 years old, who had polio and needed to be evaluated. The man was contracted but generally in good health. Entering into this small shack to visit this man I was hit with the realization that the basic things for a nurse are still true. I spent a significant amount of time doing education around position changes and chest PT two basic things that whether I was in a hospital in Boston or a shack in the DR were exactly the same. 

The final part of our day had nothing to do with my ability to take care of patients but was still a fairly important nursing job. We unloaded a giant garage of random boxes of donated medications, sorted them, reorganized them in the garage to make them easily accessible, and provided education regarding the supplies to the local church aid organization. So simple, so labor intensive, and so necessary in many ways. 

Part of me was nervous I was going to come to the DR and halfway through the trip be upset at the lack of sustainability for many of the projects we help with, but I'm not at all. I'm pleasantly surprised at the impact we are able to have through education and simple labor that otherwise the people of the DR may not have access to throughout their life. 

That's all for now...this is going to be another post for another time so sorry if it gets loaded with a bunch of others.