This morning we got up nice and early for an hour and a half bus ride over to another campus for Universidad Austral. We grabbed a quick breakfast and headed into the first two lectures of the day. We learned how the hospital at Austral is funded and the different goals and challenges that the hospital faces. It’s interesting to see the breakdown of which insurance companies have a share in their hospital, Osde has about 35%, Swiss Medical has about 10%, and their own company has about 9%. They also talked about how they are part of a group called the Joint International Commission which meets certain high standards for hospitals, hospitals part of which are IV leagues.
After our lectures we had a tour of the hospital, which looked a lot more similar to the hospitals we have in America compared to the ones we saw on Wednesday. We then had the chance to talk to current nursing students who go to Universidad Austral and it was so fun comparing the similarities and differences between our education and our lives in general. My table had the chance to talk to a first-year student and 2 third-year students. The program that they are in is 5 years compared to our 4 years and once they are done with school they are certified nurses whereas we have to take the NCLEX. Another interesting difference we found is that to pass our classes at Pitt we must earn a C for a final grade where they must pass their final tests and if they don’t they have 3 tries to pass before they have to retake the class. A similarity though is that we do take pretty much the same classes the first year such as Anatomy and Chemistry.
Once we were done with our visit we got back on the bus and we thought we were heading back to the hotel but we actually had one more stop at the San Isidro Hospital. We had a quick lecture here where we learned about how their hospital runs as well as the primary care centers they have throughout San Isidro. We went on a quick tour of the hospital which felt like a mix of the Fernandez hospital and the hospital at Universidad Austral.
