Friday's visit to the hospital in Turrialba

Each friday since we've been here, we've had the chance to visit a somewhat local hospital. We were split up into two groups of about 13 and my group has gone to a hospital in Turrialba, CR the last two weeks. The motives for going to these hospital visits is so that we can see what developing world hospitals are like, learn some more Spanish in regards to medical equipment, and have some practice working on their equipment. These hospitals in Costa Rica are much nicer than what we will encounter in honduras and nicaragua, however. That said, its been really cool to walk around the hospital with our lecturer, Rob, who has spent his whole life doing medical device repairs and hospital planning so that he could explain to us what all the machines and all the different parts of the machines do to help the doctors, surgeons, and nurses with their work.

So, here are a few pictures from last friday at the hospital in Turrialba:


















This was our view from the bus between Cartago and Turrialba. The drive is amazing - through countryside and farms the entire way with forests covering the hills in the background.


















The first thing we got to check out was their water system and pump. Just before we had arrived, their pump (120 meters into the ground) had busted a fuse - shown in this picture. There's normally a piece of metal connecting the two plates across the insulation, but it was vaporized cause the current got out of control...























This is Rob showing us the different functions of an anesthesia machine. To show us how it worked, he would even bend down and blow into the valves to show us which parts were one-way valves and not... probably not the most sterile thing to do.























This is a shot of a woman working in their sterilization room. On thursday we had a lecture on autoclaves, so it was pretty cool to see them in action.























The last part of our tour was getting to see the Operating Room. Rob hooked Calvin up to the Pulse Oximeter, Blood Pressure, and EKG so we could see the different wave forms on the monitor.


















Here's a view of Turrialba from the hospital. Both days we were there we got to walk around in the city to grab a local lunch.






















This a picture of the two aspirators I ended up working on with Joe and Will in the afternoon after the tour. The intermittent function on both of them was busted, but we ended up fixing both of them.






















Here is Will and I putting the cover back onto one of the aspirators after we'd fixed it.


These hospital visits have been a really cool experience. It's getting everyone excited for next month.

Hopefully later this afternoon I'll get to post some pictures from our weekend trip to Cahuita... it was absolutely amazing!