Medical Students, Presidential Elections, and Leaving it all on the Pavement. Month 10.5

It's been another month of new things here in the Dominican Republic. 
For the first time in HHI's history we've had 3 Physician Assistant students (who are about to graduate and be full-fledged PAs,) with us for an entire month, finishing their clinical rotations.  Since I'm the Clinical Director I got to supervise them, which was a bit unexpected since I'm not an actual MD, and I was a bit nervous :), but overall things went great. The PA students Kate, Lane and Rob are leaving today, to return to the U.S., and Kate told me this morning that when she filled out the HHI Internship evaluation form she "ran out of room in the box where you write good things about the experiene."  So, I'm happy to hear that they also felt that things went well.

We accomplished a lot in a short period of time this month -- the PA students, several other clinical interns, and I -- as we pounded the pavement, completing community-wide Blood Pressure and Diabetes Screenings in our 4 partner communities - in both Spanish and Haitian Kreyol, staffing clinics in all 4 communities with the HHI visiting American MD's for a week in which we treated 400 patients of all ages and medical conditions, and visiting almost 100 of HHI's chronic care patients in their homes to help them understand their hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy or asthma better. 

We had several weeks of rain during this time, and the PA students and interns did a great job wading through new, unexpected "lakes" and rivers with me on the roads to get to patient's houses, slip-sliding through muddy roads, riding motorcycles up steep mountains where the dirt roads were partially washed out - without hesitation. We took patients to the emergency room on motorcycles and in borrowed cars when they presented with heart attack symptoms or the injuries sustained by 2 teens and a child injured in a motorcycle wreck.  We spent the night in the hospital with a woman who had just lost her baby and had no family to sit with her in the hospitals here where family members and not nurses are responsible for your care in the hospital setting. It was a completely exhausting, overworked, overwhelming, and yet wonderful month with the PA students and other interns, and I feel like we left all of our energy, sweat, and love for these patients right there on those mountain roads, and the floors of their houses, and the heads of their pets who we petted, and their children who we hugged and we played with, and we fell into bed each night tired but feeling we'd accomplished something. We "left it all on the pavement" on might say.  And now the PA students, and interns Sarah and Andrew are leaving. : (  But here are some fun photos of our past 4 weeks, here in the Domincan Republic.

This is also an interesting time in the D.R. because the Presidential election is tomorrow, Sunday, May 20th, 2012.  We'll be staying inside tomorrow after church, and likely through Monday, as the elections take place and parades and demonstrations are expected in the streets. We will wait to see whether the white party (previously in power) or the purple party (currently in power) will win, and how that will affect the country. Keep the Dominican Republic and all of it's leaders and citizens in your prayers during this time of transition and change!