First Days of Clinic

This last week I began my first day at a local clinic where I am volunteering.  The clinic is a small church-run office in a neighborhood near mine called Surquillo.  My commute is only about 15 minutes, which is great especially considering that my commute to school is somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and 15 min depending on traffic! All in all, I have very little to complain about.  But now for a little more description about the clinic.  The clinic is equipped with a pharmacy, a waiting room, two exam rooms and few offices.  Each day the clinic has a different healthcare professional come in and volunteer in the afternoons on a weekly basis.  This is great because it means that I will get the chance to possibly see a variety of areas in medicine.  Some days the healthcare professional is a dentist, others we have a general practitioner.  I am excited to finally have this opportunity to work in an NGO.  Most of the students in my program had begun their volunteer positions with their NGO's about a month ago, but I had some complications in finding a medical clinic to work with because of a healthcare strike in Peru and some other problematic circumstances.  It is a relief to be able to start and know that I finally can begin to volunteer.  For my first two days in the clinic I was assisting a dentist named Doctor Elsa.  She is one of the healthcare professionals who I will be working with the most closely.  Even from just the two days I spent with her, I feel like I have learned some useful things. Over the past year, I have taken two semesters of medical Spanish, but that did not necessarily have a focus on the mouth or dental procedures.   With Doctor Elsa, I have already learned a lot more about the names of dental tools and equipment. She is patient, fun to work with and a great dentist.  I look forward to getting to work with her more and learning about the differences between the healthcare system in Peru and the United States.   Anyway,  that's all the update from Peru that I have for now.  I didn't get a chance to take any pictures this last week, but I will try to get a couple for my future posts about the clinic.