Okay... maybe we won't go as basic as a "what I did over summer vacation" type blog. Something like that just couldn't do this trip justice. We've been in Quetzaltenango ("Xela," pronounced "sheh-lah"), Guatemala, for a little over a week now, and already it's turning out to be an incredible experience. I guess before I can really talk about what I feel like I've learned, it's important to start with the common ground of why the heck I'm even in Guate to begin with.
One of the definite benefits to studying medicine in San Antonio is the amount of support that our faculty and administration gives to our interest in going beyond our institution to learn everything we can. A prime example of this is the Center for the Medical Humanities and Ethics (CMHE... consider this a shameless plug for 'em). As an additional elective that students at our SOM can complete, there is something they call the Global Health Elective. The purpose of the course is to prepare students throughout the year for travel, learning, and practice of medicine abroad. As a culminating experience, students are then permitted to apply for and, if selected, go on trips to any of various sites around the world to put what we've learned into practice. Needless to say, that was one opportunity I was not willing to miss.
Since then, I've been accepted and am now in attendance at one of our trips to Guatemala, called ¡Vamos Guatemala! for the summer. While here, our goals include learning by doing, service to the area of Quetzaltenango, and learning about management and treatment of illnesses such as HIV/AIDS outside of the US. Up till now, our student team (comprised of MS1-now-MS2-extroadinaires Kris Koch, Stephanie Ossowski, Jay Shiao, and Gaby Villanueva) has been able to enjoy a week of running a clinic for a community just outside of Xela called Urbina (an aldea of the municipio Cantel) and in the municipio of Olintepeque.
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| Clinic was at that church. Just look at how pretty Urbina is! |
Before talking about clinic, I think it very worth mentioning again just how awesome our faculty are. Accompanying our team on this trip were three attending physicians: Dr. Theodore Wu, a 3-year veteran of our group's summer trip and pediatric intensivist at UTHSCSA; Dr. Hector Caraballo, a fresh recruit to the trip and relatively new addition to our emergency medicine department; and Dr. Kevin Wu, a rising internist in Surgery at UTHSCSA. These guys are worthy of a major shout-out because they put up with not only our inexperience, but actually managed to teach us a thing or two!
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| Approximately from Left to Right: Jay Shiao, Dr. Hector Caraballo, Gabriella Villanueva, Janitzio Guzmán, Dr. Kevin Wu, Stephanie Ossowski, Dr. Theodore Wu, and Kristopher Koch
Our clinical team was awesome. We set up shop in a local church in the upper part of the aldea de Urbina with the help of Hna. Grettel of Hogar Luis Amigo. Our clinic was pretty basic in its scope, but thanks to the generous support of the UTHSCSA Student Government Association (another shameless plug), the Woodland Baptist Church (our partners in making this trip a reality from the outset), and many others, we were able to provide basic well-child exams to children from he adjacent primary school, exams and consultations to the folks of the communities of Urbina and Olintepeque, and to a significant extent provided medication necessary to alleviate what ailed our patients.
Our basic setup mirrored, to some extent, the setup I've seen at the Volunteer Healthcare Clinic of Austin. From there, we adapted to meet the needs of the conditions on the ground and, I would say, thrived. In total, our patient count for the Urbina site must have been somewhere in the ballpark of 200 patients, who received everything from preventive anti-parasitics and basic exams, to a thorough regiment of drugs for continued treatment of complex diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
Our Olintepeque site, set up for us by Dana--a Texan native and now established member of the Guatemalan community, was pretty interesting too. In partnership with her connections here in the Xela area, Dana set us up to run consults in a small "Centro de Salud" (essentially the free care available to Guatemaltecos). There, we worked with a small cadre of staff who were simultaneously running an immunization and OB/GYN clinic to provide more general consults to patients from the area. It was really interesting to get the flavor for how local healthcare professionals worked and the conditions they experience on a daily basis. This last day of clinic last week brought our total patient count up into the 250-ish region.
As I look back on the week, I can't help but think about how much fun it really was. For the time being, I think the above is going to have to suffice. There's an early morning tomorrow as we go out to continue working on a small public health project in Urbina. Keep an eye out for part 2 of our week 1 recap, and for more posts as we continue along on our trip! --JG |
