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soo after an awesome weekend of scuba diving, snorkeling, sailing, and realxing, back to work today. Today we went back to Port Maria. Felt much more comfrortable this week as compared to last week, as we knew where to go, who to talk to. I worked in the hospital and saw ED patients and also helped out the clinic and saw some of those patients as well. Pretty busy day. Saw a range of illness from URIs to many skin infections to knee pain. Kind of challenging to figure out how to manage patients without laboratory tests. Really relying on clinic skills. The patients are so appreciative and friendly.

Hello from Jamaica! It has been a wonderful first week and after getting settled in, we started our first day of clinic this Tuesday at Port Maria’s clinic and A&E department. We split up our time between the A&E and clinic but the ED was slow with not much pedi cases so we both ended up working the clinic which was busy with pedi patients. I ended up seeing 9 patients or so the first day and it was pretty busy in the morning! One difference I noticed was the lab is open in the morning for several hours and if you miss that window, you have to draw your own labs which we ended up having to do. A CBC is fast to run with results in 10 minutes, but we sent for coags which ended up being a send out and can take 3-4 days and cultures even longer. It makes you really think about whether you really need those labs and how to manage your patient given your clinical judgement knowing that it may take a while for labs to come back. I saw several gastroenteritis cases, a primary herpes gingivostomatitis, asthma exacerbations, and well checks. It all seemed similar to urgent care clinic that I see back in the States. In the beginning of the day, there was a long line outside of the clinic but by the afternoon we were able to finish seeing everyone.