Today we toured the Diego Parisien Hopsital and the University of La Matanza; both are public institutions located in the La Matanza municipal. They serve 3 million people outside of the main city of Buenos Aires- I was honestly surprised to see this many people in this province. Although this was not the only hospital for this area, that is still an overwhelming responsibility- and the hospital was not much bigger than any of the other ones we have already toured. This really showed that the municipalities have so much pressure to provide enough public resources for all their citizens- which can be difficult considering how limited their funding is. When meeting with the hospital’s director, I asked him what some of their challenges was when working with the province – to which he laughed and asked how much time I had. He said that everyday there are pressing issues. This was reflected in the makeup and layout of the hospital.
It is also important to note that La Matanza deals with more drug problems and poverty than the main city of Buenos Aires. Additionally, they only receive money from the province- unlike other public hospitals like San Isidro who receive funds from both the province and municipality. This reflects on issues like staffing and organization. For staffing in particular, I was surprised to find that alot of nurses and doctors work at both this hospital and hold another job at a private medical center as well.
When entering the hospital, the first thing I noticed was piles of trash near the entrance. There were multiple exposed wires, broken glasses, and even wild cats roaming around the building. However, the building itself is very old and is still not recovered from 3 major floods that occurred years ago. Ultimately this conveys how infrastructure is an issue that takes years long to fix, and where their priorities are. They continue to make improvements, however, such as their new ICU unit. We got to tour multiple wards of the hospital such as their current ICU and Maternity. All in all this hospital clearly got less money than the others we have seen so far – reflected in the state of equipment, organization, and appearances.
After this, we got to spend some time at La Matanza’s public university, where we chatted with current nursing students and got to watch a student-patient simulation. Being a business student, this was very interesting to witness. One thing I find interesting about college in Buenos Aires is they do not have a prominent dorm culture like in the United States- living in dorms is not normal here.
To conclude, today was very eye opening. As my time in Buenos Aires goes on, it is interesting to have the ability to compare public and private hospitals to clinics we have seen in past days and I look forward to analyzing this even more in the future.