A typical day for a global health intern in Portugal starts at 7:00 am. I wake up this early in order to shower if I need to and get ready for the hospital. We usually try to get to the hospital around 8:30 or 9:00, depending on when the doctors wanted us there. Each week we would shadow a different specialty. For our group, we had neurology, pediatrics, orthopedics, general surgery, anesthesiology, and internal medicine. On every Monday we would meet at 9:00 at Human Resources to have a representative, Diogo, take us to the doctors we would be with for the week. We would shadow the doctors as they did consultations, worked in the infirmary, or performed surgery. On the days we watched surgeries, we would sometimes see three surgeries or we would only see one. Some surgeries lasted almost five hours long. After standing for that long we would be really tired and just want to go home. Consultations could vary in length. There could be a lot of patients to be seen or there could only be a few. Depending on the specialty, consultations bring a wide variety of cases. Being in the infirmary isn’t as exciting as it might sound. We would round on all the patients, only seeing them for a few minutes. Then we would go to the charting room and chart everything we saw for a few hours. Around noon, the doctors would let us go because charting is very boring. While in the infirmary, most of the day is spent charting. After we are done shadowing, we would go eat in the cafeteria at the hospital. The food was actually pretty good for hospital food. After lunch, we would go to the bus stop and wait for the bus. I’m sure we waited for public transportation a good portion of our time in Portugal. If we didn’t get done shadowing by 12:45, we would miss the bus and have to wait until 1:30 when the next one came.
After we are done shadowing, we would go back to the hostel and get a snack from the kitchen if we didn’t eat at the hospital. The rest of the day was free time. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we would have group dinners with Madalena, our site manager from Atlantis. We would go to restaurants in Cascais and Lisbon. Most of the days we would go to the beach, go shopping, or just hang out at the hostel. I tried to do homework, but I would usually end up falling asleep for a few hours. The rest of the day would be a surprise. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but we were going to do something. It was nice being able to explore Cascais and get to know the culture more each day. Each day is rarely the same. I try to explore new things each day to get the most out of this internship. One thing that was kept constant was our night time routine. We would all read our scriptures and do “Come Follow Me” before bed. After that we would watch a movie. Almost every night during the week we did this. It was nice to have some time to be together as a surrogate family. Overall, a typical day as a global health intern is whatever you make it to be. It can be adventurous or relaxing. There is one thing that I could always count on. I would never be bored while living in a beautiful country like Portugal.
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