Today was our 6th day in Bilbao! After our breakfast we walked to Hospital Basturto, a teaching hospital near the School of Engineering. They started off the day with multiple presentations around healthcare, nursing education, and biomedical engineering in Bilbao. It was extremely interesting to compare the Spanish system to the system in the United States. We then split up into groups to take a tour of different parts of the hospital. My group started out in the Pediatric ER where we got to see how they triage patients and the different organization techniques to provide a smooth access to all kinds of equipment. We then headed to an ICU unit that was closed to see how the unit is set up. The unit that we visited is used for infectious deceased and can be set up and fully operational within hours. After that, we headed to the gynecology and OB units to see how their units differ. One thing that surprised me was that being a midwife in Spain is a highly sought after profession and is extremely competitive, whereas in the United States it is not as common. We then went to the laboratory to see the different types of tests they can run. Finally we ended our tour of the hospital in the underground tunnels seeing the engineering aspect of how the hospital is run. 

After lunch we walked over to the Guggenheim Museum to look at all the cool art work. I was extremely fascinated by the outside of the museum. Overall it was such an informative and exciting day learning about the healthcare system in Spain, I can’t wait for more!