This week was the first week of shadowing in the hospital. Kami and I were in Pediatrics this week, which was a dream come true for me. I have always loved working with children and newborns. Coming into this internship, I knew I wanted to work in Pediatrics for my career. On Monday, we started in the nursery, where mother's and their babies stay just after they are born. We observed Dr. Elisa do assessments on two babies in preparation for them to go home. They were absolutely adorable! Dr. Elisa didn't speak english very well, so we just observed and tried to figure out what she was doing. We were only able to shadow for a few hours that day due to our orientation beforehand. The following day, we were in the nursery again. We shadowed Dr. José, an intern. He spoke english very well, which was nice for us. He explained every step he did and why he was doing it. We observed him do initial assessments on three babies. By going through each step, I got a better understanding of what Dr. Elisa was doing the day before. We stayed with José until about 12:30. After we had finished all the assessments, he had a lot of charting to do and told us we could go.
The next day, we were in the pediatric medical unit. It wasn't the most exciting day we'd had. There were only six patients on the floor and six doctors working. We were only able to see two patients. One was a little girl who had chickenpox and a bacterial infection. The other was a little boy who had bronchiolitis. Dr. Estella, the resident we followed, was hoping to send the boy home that evening, but he ended up staying one more night. Besides doing assessments on these two patients, we didn't do anything else. The doctors just charted the rest of the time we were there, which was until 12:30. While the doctors charted, we were able to talk to the nurses about the healthcare here in Portugal. They told us all about the differences between the US and Portugal. In Portugal, healthcare is basically free to the public. They don't have to have private insurance to receive healthcare. They did say that this causes a lot of people to come into the hospital for reasons that should be taken care of by a family doctor in a clinic, which makes the ER constantly full. It was a really interesting conversation.
The Final day in Pediatrics was better than the previous day. I was able to observe Dr. Carina doing consultations. She explained to me beforehand that most of the consultations would be in Portuguese and she wouldn't have very much time to explain everything to me. I was fine with that because I would still be able to learn a lot just from observing. We saw six patients ranging from ages 1-14. All of them had different reasons why they came in. One patient came in for a follow up for encephalitis. Dr. Carina had him do several neurological tests, like touching your finger to your nose, walking in a straight line, and moving your tongue from side to side. All the other patients received normal physical exams. She wasn't able to explain to me why she was doing what she did, but from knowing the diagnoses, I was able to deduce what she was looking for.
After this week in Pediatrics, I realized I want to work with newborns. I love being able to see the mothers so happy when you help their newborn. I really enjoyed my time in the nursery and I was able to learn more about taking care of the babies. I hope I can continue to learn more about Pediatrics and discover if this is the right path for me.
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