A Day in the Life of a Global Health Intern

My experience as a Global Health Intern was fantastic! I learned so much in such a short amount of time and met so many great people. First off I’ll give you a little background on what we would do in general and then explain some of my personal experiences. So in Spain the general work schedule is start work around eight in the morning and then work until about two or three in the afternoon and then go have a big lunch, the largest meal of the day. In the hospital units no one went back after lunch, we only worked till at latest four but usually around three. In other ocupations or maybe other units they would go back around five for about two more hours. So every morning I would wake up at seven and get ready then I’d take the tram to the hospital where I’d meet with the doctors, in two of the units we would have meetings first thing to go over the plan with everyone in the unit then we would disperse and see patients and do our individual responsibilities for the day. At the end of the work day I would leave the hospital and meet up with the rest of the group and we’d get a little lunch and head back to the hotel and either relax or go play soccer or go explore or something like that. Then around eight in the afternoon Inma, our program director would come and we would go to dinner and get ice cream or churros after then we would come back to the hotel and play games, that was a normal work day. Sometimes we would have FHE with the members or go to the mall and then on the weekends it was always a good time!

Now my personal experience with the doctors was great! My first week in ENT I had to learn how to saw that in Spanish which is a hard word, otorrinolaringologo, but man was it worth it because that unit was awesome! But like I said I met so many great people! Maria Jose was the doctor in ENT and she was such a great lady, she would tell me to move to Zaragoza and she would be my Spanish mom, she was so sweet! The nurse Isabel was great too, what made it so great was their desire to have me learn. When we would see patients obviously they wanted the patient to be alright, but they would let me participate as much as possible and teach me as much as possible about what they were doing any why and always made sure I was understanding. Besides ENT the other units were great too but I noticed that it didn’t really matter what unit I was in,  I would enjoy the unit depending on the doctor. Because before the program started I thought oh ENT will be boring and Surgery would be cool but it was actually the opposite and that because of the Doctors. Before I came I never thought I’d be interested in specializing in ENT but now it’s a serious contender.

Life working in the hospital was great, it’s a lot more paperwork then I expected in some units and it was interesting seeing the difference between public and private healthcare but overall I had a great experience and there was never a moment I didn’t want to be there! (575)