We spent Monday and Tuesday at Surin Hospital, which is a rotation site for the medical students at the university we are staying at. It is about 3 hours away from the med school. It is a Providencial hospital, which is smaller than Maharat Hospital (a regional hospital), but bigger than Pakchong (a district hospital) and Prathai (a community hospital). It was specialists in medicine and surgery and can take 95% of the things that come its way. Monday morning was spent doing a tour and meeting the hospital director. The hospital director focuses a lot on the wellness of the employees and the happiness of employees. He feels that that decreases employee turn over and increases patient satisfaction. Don’t you wish you had happy doctors, nurses, techs, etc? I spent the afternoon in the ICU with a medicine doctor. It is 8 beds. They are building a new one that is bigger. They have patients on ventilators in the wards too. That’s not just a JPS problem.
We got to visit the place where they make the fancy Thai silk that the royal family wears. They make it on a old school spindle and old school silk thing that I can’t even start to describe how it works. Some pieces of silk were $30,000!
Dinner was at a nice restaurant with several of the doctors. Surin is the elephant capitol of Asia and at night people bring elephants to walk around. We got to feed one and pet her. She was absolutely beautiful! I want one.
Tuesday I went OR hopping in the morning. I saw cystoscopy, lithotripsy, two EGDs (one with bad esophageal cancer and one that got variceal banding), and a cataract surgery. It was nice seeing procedures that I don’t get to normally see, like the cataract surgery. We saw more acupuncture in the afternoon by a PM&R doctor. She treats nerve injury, stroke patients, and a lot of other physically debilitating illnesses with acupuncture. I hope to go back to Surin some day to go to the elephant village. We headed back for our final night at Suranaree University of Technology.
Wednesday we flew to Chang Rai. Once we got settled in our rooms we went to the night market. There was live music and tons of vendors. There was a bike made out of bamboo! It was legit too. I want one. I got to do a tea tasting. Of course I bought a tea set.
Today we did mobile clinic at a village in the mountains. It is absolutely beautiful up there! I and Dr. Seekaow did a home visit on a newborn and postpartum patient first. When we got back to the home where the clinic was there were plenty of patients. Our pharmacy was limited, so there wasn’t much we could offer. But, the people appreciate being heard and touched and examined. It’s a small village with only 40 homes. We saw about 40 patients. The school age kids were in school and the men were working. Mostly women, kids, and geriatrics. The people of the village are all like one big family. Most of them hung around to socialize with each other after everyone was seen. I love how tight knit their communities are. And as usual, they are so hospitable. They let us pick fruit off their trees to eat. It was awesome eating fruit that I just hand picked.
This afternoon we went to a market on the Burma/ Thailand border. Not as good as the night market, but it was something to do. We also stopped by a strawberry field. Of course we sang Strawberry Fields and Strawberry Wine the entire time we were there. Turning in earlier tonight. Hope to go back to listen to the musicians in the night market again tomorrow. We are doing another mobile clinic in a Hilltribe village tomorrow.
