Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Having a Student in Santo Domingo



To be honest, before Jared’s arrival I was only thinking of the increased amount of work that would be incurred. Although it is a bit more work, with Jared around, the last couple of weeks in Santo Domingo have been very productive and certainly a blessing. 

Simply speaking, it’s nice not to have to travel by myself. But, there have been numerous clinical benefits that I have seen thus far. Jared is speaking about as much Spanish as I do, but he can pick up on key words from a patient that I miss when we don’t have help to translate. Being a student, Jared has a recent background in wound care and neurological rehabilitation, areas that I have not seen in about 10 years.  Jared is also planning an educational session for the community on low back pain, something that I was having trouble finding the time to plan. He has also helped me with contacting a PT here in Ecuador. I think this contact will be very helpful in the future, if it works out to return for a week with a group of students.

Jared has also shared that this experience has been particularly helpful to him. Because of the language differences, Jared and I can talk about detailed patient care while seeing the patient. (of course with permission of the patient) In a normal setting, we often have to be careful because the patient may lose confidence in a student if the patient perceives a lack of knowledge or experience. Also, Jared is enjoying the variety of patients and the opportunity to use his medical screening skills.


Very cool experience. Let us pray that our patients continue to benefit from our care and Jared continues to get the clinical experiences he needs for future work.

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