No I didn't get sick! lol, My teacher set up for me to go to a hospital for a couple of hours. I toured the hospital and spoke to the nurses and doctors. Everyone was very receptive and friendly. My language skills were put to test because absolutely NO ONE spoke a word of English and the nurse manager talked a mile a minute. Boy was that tough.
They asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know everything, how long schooling was, how much I get paid, what the differences between their hospitals and our hospitals were. I almost felt bad telling them the truth (how much I get paid and how far aadvanced some of the technology was, some of the rules that were in place that weren't in place here, etc).
It was an old building and it was a public hospital. Most of the public hospitals have little funding. The nurses have a high patient to nurse ratio and they are paid little. The doctors are also paid menially. They re-use a lot of things that we wouldn't re-use in the states. Some differences are pretty vast.
The public hospitals and schools in Argentina are free, not just for Argentines but anyone who comes to the country. For that reason, they are overcrowded with little funding from the Government. People from neighboring countries come for surgeries or treatments and go back home when they are done.
Side Note - Apparently Argentine's don't need a visa to come to the states like so many other countries. Because of the economy crash, their peso is so weak, and so most of them can't afford to come to the states. It's a distant dream of many Argentine's I've talked to. It's funny that they are so curious and really want to come. The poor Argentine's can't take advantage, but habitants from other countries surely are. I met a hatian that is doing this exact thing and I imagine there are many more. She came here to college (for free) and after 2 years of living here, you can get an Argetine passport. It's harder to get in the states from Haiti, but she will be able to enter the states as an "Argentine" when her 2 yrs is up.
Considering what they had, they worked well together and the place was fairly clean and well-run. It was an awesome experience. I got to watch a surgery and I was within an arms reach, I stood next to the surgeon. I've never seen a GI surgery up-close and so it was really cool to see. They have no RN's in the operating room because they are short staffed. They have OR techs that pass supplies, but that's the extent of help they had. There were two surgeons working together and so it worked it okay. The anesthesiologist sedated and intubated the patient, setup the monitoring and was off to another patient, checking in every now and then. There are so many potential things that could go wrong, that's why there is such liability and there could never be an OR setting like that in the states. I guess they have less malpractice here and so they have learned to work around short-comings to meet their needs and seem to be doing just fine.
It was cool one, one of the nurses was so interested in learning English in going to America someday. He offered to show me around the city in exchange for teaching him a few words in English. We had a lot of fun. It's funny to see people so interested in the US and English when for me it's usually the other way around.
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