Interesting week at the clinic

This has certainly started out as an interesting week at the clinic! Laura is gone to Le Ceiba (on the mainland) with half the med students to help out with a big surgery clinic that a mission group from the states is hosting. So I'm the new head nurse (lol, thats what happens when you only have 2 nurses, and one leaves.. but I'm still taking it as a compliment!). And thankfully we have a volunteer RN in for the week, so I'm not solo anymore, but I'm still orientating her and stuff, so its still a lot of responsibility. But I'm loving it! :) Lots of critical thinking and problem solving necessary!

And we have seen some cool stuff over the last few days... an infected gunshot wound, really nasty cases of chicken pox, and interestingly enough, some of my fav patients have been gringos (Americans/white people). Gringos seem to get themselves into the most interesting predicaments.. we had a nice elderly gentleman who accidentally overdosed himself on his blood pressure meds (easily enough to do) and we ended up monitoring him on the EKG all morning but he was fine.. then another had a stroke, and my favorite of today was a woman who came in for a HIV test (which normally requires a finger stick which we draw about 1.5mls of blood from) but she had a blood disorder and it clotted too quickly.. so I got to draw her blood (venipuncture, which is not that common at the clinic because we dont have any volunteer lab techs right now, so we send any pts who really need blood drawn away to have it done at the hospital). Anyway, I drew her blood then I got to go use the lab equipment to spin it etc and do the HIV test! It was a blast!! 

So overall, I'm still loving the clinic and I'm totally into the swing of things here. I'm enjoying the challenge of practicing in a new culture and I finally feel like my spanish is improving (The nurse I was working with today was super impressed, but if you dont speak it, even a little seems impressive! lol, but they are getting me to translate some now, so I must be improving..or they are getting more desperate!). And I enjoy working with all the different volunteers who come from many different parts of the world and from many different professions. So much fun collaboration occurs and you learn so many different things! Plus I love being able to share about PEI and Canada with everyone.. and I feel like I'm even representing the profession of nursing well because often volunteers are surprised to find I'm a nurse and a student at that!