Third Week

Yikes! Sorry for the delay in this post. Went home this weekend to celebrate my sister's graduation from college!
This week has been insane yet I've gotten so much experience.

While I was volunteering in the Pediatric ER at NYP-Weill Cornell Monday night, I encountered a Chinese woman who had a baby that recently came out of surgery from spina bifida (deformity in the spinal cord). I never learned medical Chinese, but I was able to act as a translator for a while and saw the interaction between the medical students and residents.

Tuesday, I began a rotation with a Physiatrist at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn. I've never heard of Physiatry before, but apparently its one of the most recent board-certified fields that is similar to PT/OT. Except, physiatrists have to go to medical school and they can prescribe medications and diagnose conditions compared to physical therapists that simply try to alleviate pain.

My Wednesday class was canceled due to rain, but I went to the Met and it was super cool!

During the afternoon on Thursday, we were working for an organization called Churches United for Fair Housing (check it out: http://www.churchesunitedforfairhousing.com/). Our class separated into different groups to pass around flyers supporting the reconstruction of the old Domino factory in North Brooklyn. Its an amazing project because it would preserve the old factory to make a museum, create more than 600 affordable housing units, and form a park.

Another thing I forgot to mention last time was the differences between all the hospitals I work in. New York Presbyterian Hospital is a private hospital and by far the largest I've ever worked in. The majority of the patients I have seen are Caucasian and fairly wealthy as it is located in the Upper East Side. Woodhull Hospital is a public hospital that is located in North Brooklyn, serving residents of Bed-Stuy, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Williamsburg. Many of the patients I have seen are Hispanic and African Americans that are fairly poor. Downtown Hospital is affiliated with NYP, but it is also a non-for-profit hospital located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Most of the patients I have seen there are mostly Asians because Chinatown is nearby. As you can see, they're all very different and I've noticed the treatments and the types of doctors the patients see are not equal. This brings up the point of the program, which is to introduce us to disparities in medicine.