Welcome back and happy halfway mark! This past week at Ninos looked a little bit different as we spent the majority of the time with Dr. Bogantes in the admitted patient wing, doing more clinical assessments and consults with other departments. If you’ve ever seen any episode of a medical drama in which there is lots of dashing about in between patients and conversations in hallways in between, that’s what this week was. There are two different areas with admitted patients at Ninos and we were bouncing between the two. At some points, it was a bit hard to follow the conversation as we were joined by doctors of other specialties and medical students so the conversations were often faster. Plus, everyone was trying to stay quiet since you want to let the sick children rest and provide their parents some privacy and quiet.
I thought it was very interesting since we got to explore more of the hospital and see another side to Dr. Bogantes’s work. Normally, we are seeing a lot of follow up appointments and going over test results, were as this was determining the type of test to run and what physiological markers are present to illustrate why those tests are needed. We also got some insight into how different areas of the hospital work and how Ninos operates as a teaching hospital.
As for the weekend, we were on the Pacific coast in Manuel Antonio and Quepos! We spent Saturday in the National Park, hiking to a season waterfall, seeing some animals up close, and enjoying the sea air. This was the first time it felt like we were in a rainforest (thank you humidity!) but being able to dip our toes in the ocean was a great way to cool off. I also learned that this park in particular is very specific about what you can bring in because of all the animal life (leave your plastic water bottle at home!). We ended the day with tacos and a beautiful sunset.
Sunday we woke up early and spent several hours at Playa Biesanz, which is a semi private beach. It’s free and open to the public, but it was a bit of a trek to get to and you’ll see some animals along the way. We did some lounging, some reading, some photo shooting, and swimming before heading back to our Aparthotel. It was a nice slow day that was much needed, even if that slow day applied to the nearly 5 hour drive back due to traffic. And, as a perk, it didn’t rain all weekend meaning we could soak up some sun (or get slightly burned in my case).
This week, we’ll be working on our final idea after meeting with our professor’s to get some feedback and starting to create our Design Criteria, while this weekend sees the reunion of us and some Bootcamp friends. I can’t wait to see what we’ll do and learn this week and, until then, be sure to keep up with the rest of the Costa Rica crew by checking out Apple, Rei, and Connor’s blogs!