First day at Hospital del Nino!!

Wow, Hospital del Nino made quite an impression on me! I don’t quite know what I was expecting, but the hospital was a lot older and poorer than I imagined. I realize that may sound a bit elitist, but I want to give you my honest impression. The building is pretty old and the hospital units look like they are out of a movie from the 1920s. There are large open rooms, with beds in a row along both sides of the room. There are no IV pumps, no central lines (even for chemo), and even general supplies are very limited.

Regardless of the appearance of the hospital, however, the children are the same here and back home – they love to smile and play, and they also get the same diseases (for the most part). Also, the doctors and nurses here are very professional, very smart, and have excellent bedside manners!

I was assigned to a pediatric nephrologist for the week. After rounding on the floors, I went with la doctora to her out-patient consults. We saw a lot of children with recurrent urinary tract infections, kidney stones, a couple of cases of hydronephrosis, and a severe case of phimosis leading to secondary urinary tract and renal infections. (For those who are not medically inclined, those are basically problems with the kidney-urinary system). Despite my poor medical Spanish abilities, the doctor was very welcoming and even had me write some of the notes – in Spanish!