Thursday June 3, 2010

Thursday June 3, 2010

It started off like any-other morning since I have been here in Chitre: I woke up on my three inch mattress, to a cold shower and the stinging sensation in my legs while I have to squat to see my reflection in the bathroom mirror. But instead of going to the community clinical sight today the University of Panama nursing students along with nurses from the clinical were going to an elementary school to give the students immunizations. We arrived at [Sukyo] bilingual school with coolers filled with ice packets that were keeping the immunizations chilled. We assisted the nurses set up an area in a classroom in which the students would come in and sit at the chairs and desks and would come up one by one to a nurse and the student would show the nurse their immunization record. At this point the nurse would look over and verify which immunization(s) the student would need and would send the student to the other nurse that was with the nursing students preparing/drawling up the immunizations that were requested. I noticed that compared to the US in Panama they differ in some of there ways when administering shots: in Panama they believe that using anything other than water to cleans the site where the injection would be administered would counterwork against the immunization and compared to what we were taught in the US to dart, the nurses of Panama prefer when giving a shot to a child go slow to make sure you don’t hit the bone. About 30 students would come in at a time and we as the nursing students would take turns preparing immunizations such as the flu, HPV etc and then administering it. A group of 30 students would come in at a time and there were about 4 groups that came in total so take that number and divide it by 12 because that was the number of nursing students taking turns and the sum is the amount of shots I got to perform in 5 hours. I wont bore anyone with boring details of what I amused myself with while I was waiting for my turn again.
Overall it was a good experience to see how the nurses in Panama do nursing as compared to the US. One difference that stood out to me was here in the US if the child is not up to date with their immunizations they are not allowed to go to school whereas in Panama they do the immunizations right there in the school setting.