05/09/12
Today I went to start volunteering
at a public hospital. What you first
ought to know though is that healthcare here is free, to quote my oral
production teacher “Ab-so-lu-ta-mente gratis.”
The principle that if you’re sick in some way, you have to first show
papers and fill out forms of proof of insurance, etc. just isn’t accepted here
because you still shouldn’t have to “walk around with a limp your whole life
because you don’t have the money to get a needed treatment.” While I’m not saying that Obamacare is necessarily the
right solution for us, she does have a point.
How cruel it must seem to them that we don’t have the compassion to care
for people that are truly sick or in pain, especially since in a lot of cases, it’s no one’s fault.
Anyways, there are public hospitals
here that are completely free and according to my teacher, people even come
here by the busload from other countries in South America just to get free
healthcare. However, this makes for
crowded hospitals and you must schedule appointments months ahead of time in
the hospitals. There are also private clinics
that you can go to if you have the money to pay for them or if you have some
sort of insurance. I can’t say I’ve
thoroughly researched how this part of it works, but all of what I’ve said before
I’ve heard from my teacher and some from my host mom and her daughter, so I feel
like that’s pretty good a pretty good source.
The hospital I went to is a public
one, and walking up to it, I felt like I was going to a hospital in a tropical location,
I think it was a mix of the trees in the yard and the slated windows on
the building. I can definitely say
though it didn’t look like a massive US hospital, especially with a bunch of
separate buildings. The part of the
hospital I went though was old but nice, BUT I think what set this apart from
the US hospitals what it lacked: chemical smells, extreme sanitation, white
walls, and thousands of beeping monitors, phones, and machines. Maybe it was just the area I was in, but I
guess I’ll find that out when I go back to actually do the volunteer work next
week.
After meeting with the volunteer
coordinator (who I successfully talked to and understood for half an hour maybe
J), we went to observe a meeting between all the workers in the
department. I don’t know how many people
work in the department, but I felt like everyone was there-doctors, nurses,
social workers, coordinators-probably 25 people. For the next hour or hour and a half we sat
in a big room as the doctors presented patients’ cases, not just their medical
conditions, but also their familial support, etc. It was definitely different than anything I’ve
seen before, but kind of cool to see everyone get on the same page and have a
basic history of all the patients. And
as a side note, as we had this meeting the staff passed around a cup of mate
and took turns drinking from the same straw….kinda cracked me up to see 20+
medical professionals “share their germs” as they say…it’s not something people
worry about so much here. Maybe it’s
their somewhat lack of real winter that makes them not worry about getting sick
here. Haha
I actually also found this website with
pictures of the hospital and it happens to be the department that I’m working
in and a lot of the people I was with today in the meeting, if you’re
interested. J
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