I spent the summer of 2019 in and around Quito, Ecuador as a medical student intern with Child Family Health International (CFHI). CFHI is an organization with global health education program and field experiences in a number of countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The core values of the organization align with my own personal values as they are committed to encouraging professional development through community engagement in a way that highlights the healthcare workers, health systems, and determinants of health in low-resource settings.
For me, I was particularly interested in completing this program because it provided me a unique opportunity to both immerse myself in medical settings relating to women’s health in urban areas in a limited-resource setting as well as improve upon my conversation and medical Spanish. I was able to rotate through 6 different hospital/clinic settings, including inpatient child/adolescent postpartum wards, surgical procedures including hysterectomies and Cesarean sections, as well as outpatient routine gynecological care in entirely Spanish-speaking settings. After working in clinic for 4-5 hours each morning, every afternoon was spent in the classroom learning conversational and medically-related Spanish vocabulary.
After having completed this program, I not only am grateful for the experiences to meet and work alongside medical professional and other students in so many different settings in and around Quito, but I am so thankful for the immersive Spanish environment and daily classes which, in a two-month time frame, propelled my Spanish-speaking abilities far above what any medical Spanish class in the United States could have done. Having this new-found appreciation and understanding for women’s health in the context of global health as well as a markedly improved ability to communicate with future Spanish-speaking patients has energized me for the completion of my medical school education here at Weill. I look forward to opportunities to apply and expand upon my skills in the coming years!