This week was another busy one! It included a day trip to Arenal volcano, a needs finding workshop, moving into a new hostel, and starting my internship with Meditek in La Sabana, San Jose. Lots of twists and turns along the way, but I’m finally starting to feel settled here in Costa Rica and am looking forward to the stability the daily internship will bring.
Arenal Volcano
Group photo at Arenal!
What a time (15 hrs to be exact)! To start, a quick tip: be wary of tours and check not only the description but what exactly is “included”, since this is the only guaranteed portion of the trip. Our group had the unfortunate experience of going on a tour that was more of a look and see with meals along the way and a trip to the Baldi hot springs than a hike the volcano a bit then relax in the hot springs. While this was disappointing in the moment, we made the best of it and turned it into another unexpected moment of bonding. The volcano itself was huge and we stopped some unique parks and churches along the way, as well as taking tons of photos of the countryside throughout the drive! (photo alert!)
Costa Rican countryside.
Bush duck at Parque Francisco Alvarado !
Needs Finding Workshop
This two-day workshop consisted of both virtual meetings and some in-person observations at Clinica Biblica San Jose and Santa Ana (both private hospitals in Costa Rica) in their various departments. The observations were the most interesting part for me, getting to see patients x-rayed or even just watching the interactions between medical staff and patients in the waiting room and visualizing the difference in privacy in other countries. Following observations at the two hospitals, we grouped back up to organize and shape the observations into viable need statements that could have impactful solutions. Our group need statements related to standard procedure, privacy, and organization within the hospitals, and following scoping, we analyzed what questions we still had that should be answered before moving forward. It was unique to be allowed an inside view in a clinical setting and to really just get to be a fly on the wall with the sole job of observing! It was also cool to compare how things are done in Costa Rica as compared to what might typically be seen in the United States, especially with access, as we were never stopped from entering any part of the hospital.
Meditek Internship
Lunch in Puntarenas! Patacones (fried plantains) shaped into cups with shrimp! YUM
To the next… aka Meditek and the world of public hospital medical equipment installation and servicing. Jhalak and my first day started off a bit slow but we quickly got tossed into the deep end with a visit to Hospital Mexico in San Jose in the afternoon. Our job is essentially to shadow, learn, and provide assistance throughout any tasks the field engineers need to accomplish, which on this day was replacing the battery in a vitals monitor in the ER and finding which incubators had a broken scale in the Neonatal unit. My biggest takeaway: we should’ve been needs finding in the public hospitals! The ER had patients lined up in beds along the hallways (waiting to see if their condition warranted a room) and some of the babies I saw weighed in at around 2 lbs when they were born– crazy. Throughout the week we attended a training for the GE Healthcare Giraffe incubator (all in Spanish, so a great learning experience all-around!) and visited Hospital Mexico again for more “instalación de repuestos”, or installation of replacement parts, and spent a day at Hospital Monseñor Sanabria in Puntarenas, just about 1.5 hrs away from the main building. In Puntarenas we observed the troubleshooting of a broken Agfa x-ray machine and got to try some new food along the way at Restaurante Malibu, where I had the Patacones Canasta con Camarones. (photo alert!)
Lunch by the water
The blog title today comes from the motto of Meditek, “a passion for life” and their belief that everyone deserves a happy and healthy life– so cool! And in other news, the field engineers are having a field day (pun intended) with pulling out random tools and asking us for the English word, having us spell it, then looking it up. By the end of this internship I’m not sure if they will have learned more English or if we will have learned more Spanish, hah! We did learn “que chiva”, direct translation is “what a goat”, but evidently it means how great or how cool, a very exclamatory phrase!
Laurel, Jhalak, Raniyah, and I on our way to get groceries for dinner!
There are no weekend plans yet but hoping for a chill time around San Jose, perhaps some museum visiting and a showing at the Teatro Nacional. We’ve also been navigating the communal kitchen and the joys of minimal fridge space which often equates to heading to the market each day. 2/4 of our group at Selina is vegetarian, which has led to bean fajitas with guac and plantain chips and then bean quesadillas with mango salsa and patacones (all homemade and not too bad if I say so myself) thus far.
I’ll continue to send updates via this blog as my time in Costa Rica continues, and until next time, Pura Vida!