El programa de medicina (the medical program)

As you may or may not know the main reason that I came to Pop Wuj is their medical spanish program. There is a non-profit clinic under the school that serves the local community 2 days a week for very little money (because if its free people don't think its very good). I feel weird about having pictures of people in the clinic so I took pictures of the day that we cleaned the clinic.

This is the entrance to the clinic. This picture is taken from the sidewalk and there is a pretty busy street right outside so there is always smog in the clinic and most things are covered in black dust or film from the exhaust. A little different than in the US.


Usually this room is filled with chairs and patients check in at the desk and are given a number in the order they came (so people form a line before the clinic opens in the morning) and then you are seen in order of your number. It is not a walk-in clinic though so people make appointments, though probably there are walk-ins sometimes. I'm not totally clear on that.


This is the pharmacy where we spend most of our time when we are in the clinic. Yes we are pharmacists, but there are not very many serious drugs. We give out a lot of vitamins and antacids.


This is a lot of people cleaning the pharmacy. Usually there are about 4 people in here on a normal clinic day which is still pretty packed.


This is the part of the clinic with the rooms where people are seen by the doctors and we can shadow the doctors when they are seeing patients. The medical students also do "triage" of patients in two places. To the left behind that little wall and at that table in the picture below.


For triage the medical students find out why the patient is there that day and a little of their medical history. We also take their height, weight, blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and their blood sugar if they are diabetic. It is not really triage because we do not prioritize, but that is what we call it.


And that is about it for the clinic. It is just primary care so we see a lot of things over and over again. Like scabes. I'll try to talk more about the mobile clinic in a different post. This is a view from the clinic to the outside and you can see the shop across the street. Not a lot of distance from the clinic to the cars. Okay headed to Antigua with a friend today. More later.