First Day on the Job

We toured all of each other's clinical sites yesterday and started today. We lucked out because our hospital is one of the only sites with air conditioning. What makes our site so challenging is that there are no physical therapists there except for the month that there are PT students. So, there is no 'organization' as to who we see or when. There are 3 main units that we will be working on, the orthopedic unit, the neurological unit and the burn unit. We spent all morning in the orthopedic unit. We primarily observed. we couldnt treat most of the children because they were mostly all pre-op (meaning that they were in to get casted for a fracture and we shouldnt be moving and doing exercises with them or we could make it worse). We did help a girl there who has osteogenesa imperfectia which is a condition where your bones are very brittle and break easily. She was 9 but only looked about 2 years old. Her arms were all swervy and her ribs flared due to multiple fractures. We spent a majority of our time in the casting room watching them cast for various fractures and clubfeet. The streets in the DR are crazy, there are no lanes and you go whenever, so almost all of the kids with fractures were from motor vehicle accidents. Tomorrow we are going to visit the neuroligical unit. This weekend, we are going to a rural village and teaching the community on various PT related health issues in spanish. My group will be focusing on wound care and foot care with diabetes. We are going to be paired up and stay with one of the families in the village. Pray for confidence and the ability to learn spanish and comminucate with those around me. Thank you all for your support and prayers!

I'm Here

Hey all,
We all (except 2 students stuck in Chicago) made it safely to the DR last night. It had been raining all day to the point where the water came up to your knees in the streets. Thankfully, the water had gone down a bit when we arrived. The plane landing was ruff (a few times it felt like we were dropping straight down for 3-4 seconds!), but we made it!
Our dormatory has about 40 bunkbeds with bug nets over us. Today, we are going to have orientation and a scavenger hunt of Santiago-and my family all knows how much I love scavenger hunts ;)

In attempt to show family and friends my experience in the Domincan Republic, I decided to come up with my own blog. In only 3 short weeks, I will be flying out to the Domincan Republic along with about 15 of my classmates and other physical therapists from around the country for four weeks. I will be working at a hospital called Hospital de los ninos, which is a hospital for children with musculoskeletal, integumentary, cardiopulmonary and other problems. Since the we are the only physical therapists that this facility will have all year, out primary focus is not only on treating children, but also educating physicians, nurses and other healthcare providers on proper positioning and exercises to optimize each child's abilities (all inservices are going to be in spanish, by the way).
So I'm hoping that this will give you all a glimpse of the Domincan and my journey there as well. Feel free to make little comments of encouragement, prayer, whatever. Please pray for my classmates that we all have safe travel to the Domincan in the first place. I will talk to you all soon...