La Clinica de Soloy

I spent most of my clinical time in the community of Soloy. On our first day in the clinic we didn’t really know what to expect. The clinic itself was a free-standing building with sections for child well-visits, maternity, and an urgent care section as well. There was a large central waiting room, and each section of the clinic would call for their patients individually. On day one, I shadowed what we would consider in the U.S. a primary care physician for a few hours and tried to keep up with what she was saying. She spoke a little English and I spoke a little Spanish, so there was a substantial amount of gesturing and squinting to try to convey what we were trying to say to each other. Luckily, many of the drug names looked very similar, and some of the diagnostic terms were similar as well. Interestingly, acetaminophen is the same in English and in Spanish; the key difference being its pronunciation.

On our second day in the community, we arrived better prepared. We brought paper and crayons and set up a little station to keep the kids occupied until they or their parents were called to be seen. We didn’t actually have coloring books, so Christine and I drew shapes for them to color. They called Christine "maestra" which means teacher; it was absolutely adorable.

At one point, Dr. Cadena came over and told Addie and I that it would be a good idea to do a little patient education for all of the adults in the waiting room. We gently tore the influenza poster off the wall and tried our best to make sense in Spanish as we read the poster to the men and women in the waiting room. I’m assuming we got our point across because we got a few laughs when Addie pretended to sneeze on her hand and then touch me, and I acted like I was really disgusted. We were trying to teach them to do the Dracula sneeze into their elbows. We ended up having a lot of fun at the clinics!