Ping’s Blog 1

Ping’s Blog 1 - Experience at Centro de Salud de Chitre, Panama March 12 - With Professora Meriela Villarreal

Seven of our USf nursing students arrived at Centro de Salud de Chitre at around 7:30am this morning. This is one of the main clinics in this area and the services are free of charge or at very low cost to the residents in this area. This is a public clinic with many different specialties. Residents come here for pediatric visits, family physician visit, gynecology exam and obstetric visit, orthodontic visit, immunization and regular physical exam for babies and children. Many residents from the area had already seen the nurses at the triage and were waiting in a common waiting hall for different specialties when we arrive. I was first assigned to a pediatric office. There was a pediatrician on duty to see the children with a nurse stationed there. During the time I was there, the nurse and I were taking the measurements of the children and plotting them on their grow chart prospectively. I was surprised to find out the nurse there had work at the same clinic for 28 years! Dr. Chen, the pediatrician, was extremely friendly and welcoming and showed me each step that he was doing and explain as much as he could in English to me. I’ve learned that the children at Panama get the blood and stool test when they are one year old. Shortly after seeing a few patients, I was reassigned to the adult injection and treatment area. In there, all the injections, dressing changes and breathing treatment will be given. Professora Villarreal was eager to teach us their way of giving injections and other treatments. I was able to give a nebulizer treatment to a chicarita who had bronchitis. I was also able to do some immunization injections. There is a common practice of IV injection of diclofenac for pain control, it is a nonopioid analgesics and it’s rarely used in the U.S. We concluded our visit about 12:30 p.m. and the clinic was close from noon to 1:00 p.m.