This week started off on a great note as we went to the Britt Coffee Tour in Heredia on Sunday. Then, as the week progressed, it became more and more interesting. Raniyah and I switched from Radiology into Pharmacy. It was deifnitely super sad for us because we felt that our radiology rotation had gone a bit too quickly! However, pharmacy turned out to be not what I had expected. In other highlights, Raniyah and I got the low-fidelity prototyping suitecase and transferred it to Clinica Biblica after much struggle to talk to the front desk person in Spanish that we weren’t coming with our luggage of clothes. Without further ado, here’s this week:
Britt Coffee Tour
The life cycle of coffee!
As Katy and Jhalak were away in Puerto Viejo, Raniyah, Vanessa, Haruto, and I decided to go up to Heredia and have our first official Britt Coffee Tour. Immediately after arrival, we were greeted by our tour guide, Luis. He was an absolute gem, speaking in both English and Spanish, as well as being an absolute laughing stock of the group. It was so refreshing to have someone who had a sense of comic relief finally be a tour guide! We also were able to see the lifecycle of Britt coffee plants, which I put a picture of above. They take ~3-4 years to transform from a coffee seed to a full blown coffee plant, so the process is a bit slower than other produce plants. Seeing how the guide talked about how there were more than 100 natural volcanic formations, I was already dumbfounded by how cool the landscpae of the country was. Even more shocking to me was how the very type (pH, temperature, elevation) of volcanic soil (which is optimal for coffee to grow) impacts the flavor profile of the coffee fruits (he emphasized that they are called fruits not beans). What was fun for others but a personal hell for me was finalyl being able to try fresh coffee made by Britt themselves. Along the tour, there were mini coffee dirnking stations sprinkled along the way. We would stop, discuss history, laugh, and then drink coffee to solidify what profile of coffee that we had gotten. Our tour guide was so funny that we even requested to get a photo wtih him at the end of the tour.
We pose under the rain with Luis, our wonderful tour guide
Our tour guide at Britt Coffee makes a pose in front of a trivia activity for countries producing the most amount of coffee
Radiology to Pharmacy
We sadly said goodbyes to our mentors on Wednesday and ventured over to Clinical Pharmacy on Thursday. Shockingly, pharmacy at Hospital Clinica Biblica had a lot more branches than what we had originally anticipated. The main pharmacy that people usually think of at the entrance of Clinica Biblica is actually the hospital pharmacy, which helps get and deliver medications to patients coming up with prescriptions. However, in Clinical Pharmacy, we shadowed student interns who were double checking that the medications that patients’ doctors precribed. They used a system that was much like Epic (which is what is used in America) and scanned each patient’s presentation, current medications, doctor’s notes, and even a pain rating. After collecting this information, they would calculate the need for a patient to have anticoagulation therapy, and decide if the antibiotics or painkillers prescribed were of the approriate dosage or potency.
What I thought was different from how America was how the pharmacists have to sometimes go up to the wards to interpret EKGs; what I mean by interpret is that they need to confirm the diagnosis from the test because oftentimes test results are neglected to be recorded on the health record system. Seeing all of the manual efforts that the student interns had to put in seemed slightly inefficient to Raniyah and I, but we understood why it was so important for them – one of their biggest goals is to reduce abuse of antibiotics and painkillers so that patients’ bodies can develop their own defenses to such afflictions. It was captivating to see a branch of pharmacy that worked to innovate within the hospital and improve post-stay outcomes.
No pictures here due to HIPPA! Sorry folks.
ULACIT “Excursion” and Getting the Low-Fidelity Prototyping Suitcase
This week, Raniyah and I went to ULACIT to grab the low-fidelity prototyping suitcase from the undergraduate students at ULACIT. The suitcase had a lot of friction when we dragged it, and it was quite heavy, so we hitched a ride back to Clinica Biblica with Dr. Wettergreen. We are looking forward to using this in the next phase of our internship where we show the hospital what a low-fidelity prototype is, and what the value of having rapid prototyping/innovation in clinical spaces. On July 8, we will have to return this to ULACIT, but until then, we will keep you all updated on what we create with our current clinical targets.
Internship Takeaways
- Problem: In radiology, the radiology technicians explained to us some tests that were extremely hard to perform on patients. They aren’t performed that often, so I presume that their workers don’t have sufficient training for such procedures.
- Potential Solution: After brainstorming, we believe that nurses could greatly benefit from both women’s health and urinary tract training models, including cystographies, pap smears, and uterosalpingographies.
- Problem: In pharmacy, we learned that over 50% of patients seen in Clinica Biblica are international (not from Costa Rica). However, the only languages the nurses can speak is English and Spanish. They told us how one time, there was a Mandarin-speaking patient, but no one could understand what she was saying (which is bad).
- Potential Solution: Thus, while this is not an engineering innovation target, I still think it’s critical that they expand in this department or outsource interpreters to increase their net of care.
I think I will retire early tonight, so this concludes this week’s update. I’ll check back in with y’all next week!