Playing Doctor...

Today was my best day in the clinic. I was in the adult outpatient department with a medic who speaks amazing English and really understands the Mae Tao system. It's an interesting set-up. Lacking trained physicians, they train their medics in much the same way EMT's and Paramedics at home are trained. You learn to recognize certain symptoms and you treat them according to guidelines.

The result is that it's a system that I can function in a little bit. I'm starting to get a feel for what their broad categories are, and how to treat each category. It's not a perfect system. People do fall through the cracks if their symptoms don't fit neatly into the clinic guidelines, but many people are helped. It also simplifies examining patients because once you don't need to find everything -- there's not much point in diagnosing an illness that it would be impossible to treat. Many patients had some kind of musculo-skeletal pain. I would do a bit of an exam and form an idea of what might be going on, but it didn't really matter since they were getting sent home with lots of ibuprofen and some info on workplace ergonomics, PT etc.

So, I guess the above sounds rather sad, but on the positive side a lot of people receive care that they wouldn't normally get, period. If that's 80-90%, then that's great. The limited number of diagnosis makes it a situation that I'm not lost in.

The medic I worked with is one of the few people who is being relocated. She's probably coming to the US. It's great for her, but only the most talented people are picked for relocation. The result is that all the people who have skills get shipped out. Not great for the Burmese population left behind. She asked about New England weather, and I asked if she had ever wanted to see snow. I think she's going to hold out for California. I think that the lowest-low here might be in the 50's.

Also, a few friends and I had our first lesson in Burmese tonight. We are going to be doing it twice a week. Our teacher is great. He is very proud of being Burmese and really takes pride in teaching us not only about his language but also his culture. It's a good opportunity, even if I won't have time to get much past greetings and introductions.