I returned late Saturday night from an amazing two weeks in Nicaragua. A group of seven girls and myself from Duke’s school of nursing completed our community health clinicals in Managua, Nicaragua from August 8-August 22. Not only did I have fun and learn a ton about Nicaragua’s health care system, but my Spanish had ample practice as well. One aspect of our program involved pairing us with a Nicaraguan nursing student with whom we worked with over the two weeks…it was full immersion and awesome. My language skills still got mad laughs and the “huh?” looks, especially when I tried to implement patient education on safe sex and sexuality, but it was amazing how much I was able to remember and pull together when forced to use it.
We spent the mornings in El Centro de Salud, a small clinic in a Managua neighborhood called Villa Libertad. This was mostly observing, but we had the opportunity to do some hands on…basically, we weren’t allowed to touch the “sharps”. The clinical offered an array of services including emergency, well baby check ups, prenatal, general med, HIV/TB, hydration, and vaccinations. I stepped way out of the way at the vaccination station, as the flying needles made me a little nervous….let’s just say they used a little bit of a different technique that I was taught. It was definitely a situation where people did the best they could with the resources that they had and the time they were given. The nurses had an average of 40 people to see in the morning and 40 to see in the afternoon. That’s a lot of patients, and certainly not a lot of time to discuss problems. It was wam bam, thank you mam….and right back through the revolving door. It was super interesting to see the differences. We were fortunate enough to see a tour of a public and private hospital one day as well, which was super interesting. The differences were huge. After seeing the public hospital I crossed my fingers daily that I wouldn’t get hurt while down there…
I missed a lot of details in the morning, as the nurses spoke too fast for me to keep up while we were working with the patients. Luckily my Nicaraguan side kick filled me in along the way…she was great about slowing it down and explaining things simply. Good thing I wasn’t charge nurse.
After lunch at UPOLI, one of Managua’s universities, we spent the afternoon doing home visits with some low income families in Villa Libertad. UPOLI runs a very small clinic in the neighborhood, and all of our families lived within a few blocks of this base. My Nicaraguan side kick Evelyng and I were assigned a family that we worked with over the two weeks. We had the pleasure of meeting Fatima, her son Elyen, and her daughter Katti who were all soooo kind. We did health assessments, interventions, and referals that will hopefully add some benefitial elements to the family’s health.
We also had a quick trip to the beach over the weekend. We drove about two hours south toward Costa Rica and had a night in San Juan del Sur. We stayed in a beautiful villa with a beautiful pool and quick access to the beach. Unfortunately I came down with a cold the very day we left for the beach, so I spent the whole trip sleeping and recovering, but it was still a nice get away from the city.
The trip was wonderful. I survived the mange street dogs and thus far I seem malaria and dengue fever free. I indulged in as many deliciously cooked plantains, as much carne asada, and coconut icecream as possible. Surprisingly I didn’t even get any GI issues to the very last day….there were few who could say the same. There’s nothing like the runs in Nicaragua, but after two days of parasite meds I was good to go. The only down fall is that I had to start back at school right away on Monday. At least it’s my last semester…yippee!
All photos from my trip can be seen under my photos page, titled Nicaragua.
Thank you Lorie for being an awesome instructor, and thank you UPOLI and the Rivas students for the kind hospitality.