Written by Stephanie Glaser and Angel:
Today we first went to the primary care center. We had a long but extremely interesting and insightful discussion with the main doctor there. Some of the main points include:
-patient centered care. In an ideal health system, the doctor should go to the patients home instead of the patients going to the doctors office.
-labor pains are an important part if the birthing process and he doesn’t believe in giving epidurals.
-in an ideal world, doctors should be paid a given amount if all their patients are healthy. For every non healthy patient, they should be deducted in pay. That keeps the doctor centered on the patients health rather than his own profit.
-at their hospital, breast feeding is mandatory for 6 months, but is suggested for up to 2 years in addition to other foods.
Next we split into groups and went into different rooms in the hospital. In my room we only saw 1 patient who had a minor cut in her head. The nurses cleaned it with iodine and sent her on her way. We thought that was interesting because in the US we just put on neosporin and a bandaid, but here they don’t have those kind of resources readily available in their homes.
Next was the leprosy hospital, where we toured the wards and sang along the way. At the end, the Nepalese nursing students sang a few songs for us too. It was a beautiful exchange!
The rest of the night we had some down time to journal and reflect, followed by dinner and discussion.