Clinic Day 1 – Alexandra

By David Ulery on September 7, 2015 • ( 0 )

Friday, August 7^th

Iquitos Clinic Day #1

Today we begin clinic in Iquitos. After breakfast we headed over to the clinic where the local people were lined up around the corner waiting for us to arrive. We received our assignments for the first half of the day and mine was Dentistry. I would be assisting the Dentist on our trip, Dr. Rosen, with teeth extractions for the morning. Dr. Rosen showed another student and I how to give an injection to numb the mouth before the extraction process and then allowed us to try it ourselves. He also let each of us extract a tooth on our own, with his guidance. He not only taught us a great deal about dentistry in a limited amount of time but he made the morning so much fun! His sense of humor and way with the patients regardless of the language barrier made the morning go by so fast and made it enjoyable. After the morning was over we returned to the hotel for lunch and then returned back to clinic for our second assignment for the day. I was assigned to Dermatology for the afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon especially since we had just finished our dermatology course a month or so before our trip to Peru. Many of the things we had learned about in our course were not commonly seen in practice in the U.S. but here I was actually seeing the things I had learned about first hand. I was able to use my Spanish to ask the patients what was going on as they showed me the issue they were having. Other students and I worked together to put together the history we were getting and what we were seeing to try to come up with a possible diagnosis and then confirm or ask the residents and attending of our trip. We also were able to use our findings to conduct research on some of the most common dermatologic conditions we saw while in Peru. This was our first real day of clinic and I had already felt like I had learned and seen more clinically than I would have in a year back home.