Hospital

I dont have much time today... We are leaving in a little bit to have dinner. One of the students we work with at the hospital invited us over for dinner. I'm excited to see her house and eat yummy home cooked food! I have a cool story from yesterday to tell you but I think I might save it for tomorrow when I have more time. And there’s a picture to go along with it but I dont have it yet so I'll try to send it tomorrow. Be excited...its a cool story. Well I thought it was cool...

Anyway, I haven’t talked much about what I actually do in the hospital. That’s because I never really know what I’m doing. Its kind of annoying. There’s like maybe 1 nurse to 6 patients if your lucky. But there isn’t really assignments they just all kind of help all of the patients. But there’s at least 6 students so you cant really have all the students follow around 1 nurse. Instead the students just wander around or sit in a random room or all 6 will huddle around a patient. So I usually help the nurses change all the bedding in the morning. The students HATE changing the bedding. I like it because it gives me something to do . I tried to get my student excited about it. I told her "dont you want to be the favorite nurse??!! I would LOVE my nurse if she gave me nice clean sheets!!! Just like a mom!" she just laughed and thought I was crazy. The conditions aren’t that great so I try to clean the room or fluff the pillow and straighten things up...my student was watching me and said "I feel that you love nursing". haha, They dont have the whole patient care thing down. They just want to do IVs and see surgeries and things that only doctors do. They dont really like interacting with patients. Thats the most important thing a nurse does!!! The patients love when you talk to them so I try to but its really hard because I dont speak Arabic and its difficult to get the student to translate everything you say. But I have been teaching how to do physical assessments. They dont really ever use their stethoscopes or assess the patients...not even the nurses. So I take the students and we do assessments on patients. Its fun. So I dont do anything really glamorous or exciting...just make beds, talk to patients, teach assessments, learn Arabic, avoid touching the bloody needles laying on the counter... They need a little help with safety precautions and infection control....
So the students are all really nice and we have dinner plans with a few of them. I really love the people here. I hope everyone’s doing well. Love yah!
Love Karen

My favorite instructor!

Helping the nurses make the beds

some of the students I worked with

Me and one of my students

the girls studying for a quiz (and hiding in a supply room...)

So I guess I didnt talk about this in my emails, but... We spent a lot of time at a local bakery. The workers new us and always tried to get us to use Arabic, gave us free cookies, VERY friendly. Anyway, I wanted to through some of those pictures in!