Down to Business

First day of rotation! Bienvenidos = Welcome!

Today was our first day of rotation. Maggie and I are here to see how the health care system and pharmacies operate in Costa Rica. We are taking some classes at a Medical School or University called UCIMED. This is a campus that trains doctors, pharmacists, physical therapists, and nutrition specialists. It was super nice and we plan to attend some lectures during our visit!

After we visited UCIMED, we continued on our tour to a private hospital in the city of San Jose. This is where we will spend several weeks working inside the hospital and at this outpatient pharmacy. Everyone is extremely welcoming and delighted to have us.

We were also given a tour of the hospital today. We were surprised that is operates with electronic medical records (all patient info on the computer) and that it was very clean. This is a photo of what a nursing station looks like. Some of the rooms were tiny, but overall the hospital is really nice.

Most of our day was meeting some different doctors and getting our paperwork finalized. This is Maggie and I waiting for "student insurance" that will cover us in case we get injured while we are working. We are not too sure if it will really help us in the long run, but we are covered!

We had an awesome first day filled with meeting new people and touring around. We start at 7am tomorrow with a talk on H1N1 (flu) and we have a long day ahead. Bye for now!