Before I arrived here, I was concerned about quite how bad my first on-call could be given the new environment, the language, and the vastly different presentations that I could see. I’d done my homework, I knew that Guatemala ranked highly in both maternal and infant mortality rates, but I’m not sure I’d taken the […]
Tag: Guatemala
Louise Kenny: It’s a mystery
One of the most exciting aspects of working here is the opportunity to have a good rummage among the rarities of diagnoses that I learnt about for the MRCP. There have been a few cases now, which have rung a big bell in my head, related to conditions which I never thought to save space […]
Louise Kenny: On-call in Guatemala
I thought I might be broken in gently to the new job, but I arrived last Friday in Santiago, and was thrown into a 24hr on-call in the ER on Saturday, which was thankfully remarkably quiet. Sadly I have had to convert to transatlantic terms, as when I use the term A+E, my American colleagues […]
Louise Kenny: Two men down and a ’99 flake
I’ve spent the last week relaxing in Antigua, Guatemala, hauling myself through 6 hours of Spanish lessons a day in a last minute attempt to quell the panic before I start work. I’ve discovered that learning to take a history in Spanish is somewhat like those 3rd year days of worrying; what came after the […]
Louise Kenny: Lost for words
It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I began to have terrible, panic-stricken nightmares about my dreadful communication skills. I wake in a trembling state, sweating because I can’t remember how to ask my patient ‘Does the pain radiate anywhere else? Does it come and go? Is it sharp, stabbing pain?’ In my […]