Morning Ceremony & A Tour of the Hospital

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This morning’s breakfast was chicken and rice soup with papaya and a fried pastry that tasted just like a doughnut! The glaze to the doughnut was sweetened condensed milk. After breakfast, we headed over to our first morning ceremony. I thought this ceremony was interesting as it was formally done where the majority of it was in Thai and the students would say many phrases and turn in multiple directions. As I wasn’t sure what was going on, I kept marching to the beat of their drum during the ceremony. I noticed that they honored Buddha and after that they had a time of silence for Christianity. I thought that was a nice gesture especially in a predominately Buddhist culture. After the ceremony, the Thai students had a presentation of each of our names and their meaning. My name, Sa Ra Pee, is the Clusiaceae flower which means good fortune and propitiousness. At this time, we then exchanged gifts as the Thai buddies gave us a picture of our flower and I gave Frong Hershey’s chocolate as her first gift. We took a tour of the BCNC campus and observed their “museum” of pictures of the king and his family members. We also observed their library, and their simulation rooms. I found those rooms to be more similar to ours back in the states than I would have imagined. They have the basic items of practice, just their approach or technology isn’t as up-to-date. We headed back for some lunch which was a delicious soup that resembled egg-drop soup, fried egg, rice with chicken and we had cucumber, papaya and we tried guava. The guava wasn’t my favorite, it tasted like green sour apples, which I am not a fan of. All of us took a ride to the public hospital, Nakornping Hospital, where we will be doing our clinical rotation. This place was quite an experience. Although, it did surpass my expectations in some ways over others. I definitely found the hospital as a whole to be more industrialized and “modern” so to speak than I expected. However, their ways of practice were not completely up to date. They were viewed as United States nursing in the 1940s. Sheets were used for both four-point restraints and used to cover a brief, in the shape of underwear on an adult. Their isolation was a plastic cover over the bed area, yet it had major holes exposing it to the air around the patient’s space. This hospital had several units, much similar to the US. One interesting thing that I thought was pretty cool was their emergency escape route. This route was a slide big enough to slide the patient’s beds down to the roof. Overall, the hospital was very hot, and I wondered why they didn’t turn the fans on. Perhaps this weather is not that hot in Thailand, but for me, I’m sweating bullets. As far as clinical goes, I can’t wait to see what the Male Medical Unit has in store for me!

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