This morning we began our day by heading back over to Austral for our lecture. This morning’s lecture was presented by the former Minister of Health for the province of Salta. Salta is a province on the poorer side and does not have easy access to healthcare. During her talk, Dr. Josefina Medrano talked about what it was like managing the hospitals during COVID and going over many pros to public hospitals. If a child is sick it is much better to go to a public hospital than a private one because there are full children in public hospitals but only pediatric departments in private hospitals.
After our first lecture this morning we got in a van and headed over to our first hospital visit of the trip! We went to Fernandez Hospital which is a public hospital. We first started our visit by getting some background information on how the hospital works the history of where the hospital started and the improvements that have been made. We then walked around the entire hospital and got to see each floor and pretty much every department. As we were walking around the hospital I noticed how busy it was as people were sitting in waiting chairs on each floor. The patients’ rooms were smaller than the ones you see in America.
After a quick lunch, we headed over to the private hospital. As we were walking up the outside of the hospital looked like a hotel and only got more impressive as we went inside. During our lecture portion, we learned about the different ways the hospital is funded and that the hospital we were at Los Arcos is known for its neuro and trauma departments. We then went and looked at a room that was typical for every floor. When walking up there I noticed that no patients were sitting in the hallways, it was very quiet. The room that we saw was by far the nicest hospital room I have ever seen. It looked like it would be in a nice hotel. There was a living room and a very nice bathroom and then the room with the patient bed. It was so interesting seeing the big difference between what a public and private hospital looks like.
