La Hospital de Daniel A. Carrion

Martes, 01-Julio-2014

Today we started our rotations at the general hospital in Huancayo. We will be helping out at several different ones around the city. 

This hospital sadly looks and feels like it belongs in the 1940s. The hospital is comprised of several buildings all connected by an open courtyard. So when a patient is done with surgery and needs to go to the Post-Op area, they are wheeled outside in the hospital bed to get to the next building. Also there is little to no security so anyone can enter the hospital which is kind of terrifying. 

We visited three different wards: Cirugia Varones (Men's Post-Op), Cirugia Mujeres (Women's Post-Op), and Traumatologia Varones (Men's Trauma). 

Some of the more notable things I noticed were that all charts were paper records only... Even graphs were hand drawn! The nurses and doctors have beautiful cursive handwriting so it was fun to read them. 

Second, they crammed 20-25 beds into a single room so that there was maybe 3 feet between patients. This probablydoesnt help reduce the high rate of infections we saw. 

And lastly, almost every post-op patient we talked to had surgery due to abdominal issues and now are facing infections. This is why preventative medicine is so important!! No one should face surgery over a stomach problem gone untreated for too long. 

Here are some of the other fellows I'm with. We are in the main courtyard waiting for our med student, Helen, to come take us to the trauma unit. 

The trauma patients all had pretty interesting stories: one man was there due to bullfighting and had his right leg amputated, another man jumped a fence to get away from a gang of stray dogs and broke his elbow, and a third man had a construction accident which is fairly common. 

After rotations, we had a 2 hour lunch break and I couldn't figure out why so long... Well I soon remembered that thing called a siesta! Lunch is the largest meal of the day and we had a delicious traditional meal! It was Papas a la Huancaina (spicy potatoes), Asparagus soup***SO GOOD, and Peruvian spaghetti. The meal was accompanied with Chicha Morada (blue corn drink that tastes like fireball). After that 3 course meal I was definitely ready for a siesta!

Our afternoon was filled with some quality orientation meet-and-greet which conviently took place on a rooftop. What a view! 

We then convinced Danel (our coordinator) to help us find a bar to watch the USA vs Belgium. Needless to say we definitely made a scene and many pictures were taken of us... But I don't care it was still fun to cheer for the good old red, white, and blue!