Powerpoint given! (by EDF)

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Hi friends!
I'm glad to see that we have some readers- yeah, family!

So, looking at our blog, we realized that we only have photos of food and our trips- fun for sure, but we have also been doing some work! On Wednesday we went to the public hospital in Sonsonate to give our first powerpoint presentation to 3rd year family medicine residents. Sonsonate is about an hour west of San Salvador, and has a hotter climate. The hospital is quite nice, and brand new- they had to build a new building because of damage from the 2001 earthquake, and this building has been open for only 4 months.

First off, we met the director of the residency program, Dr. C., then we had a meeting with the director of the hospital. Despite his busy job, he invited us to sit down and have coffee and chatted with us for at least half an hour about how wonderful family medicine is! He was so positive, and so excited to host us, that it started to feel a little surreal to both me and KRF. He was also happily blasting the radio in the background, Maroon 5 to be exact, so I had to concentrate really hard to understand what he was saying! Our faces hurt from smiling so much!

Our talk went well, I think. We gave some background on the history of New Orleans, what the healthcare system was like pre-Katrina (the Charity Hospital system), and what happened during and after Katrina. We also talked about all the community health centers and local organizations currently involved in healthcare and rebuilding. Quite a lot of material! We also threw in a bit about family medicine in the States (including the primary care model of healthcare delivery called the 'patient-centered medical home'), and lessons we have learned from our time in El Salvador. The residents were very engaged, and asked a lot of questions- especially about the healthcare system and insurance in the U.S. We may add some slides on that for our next talk. All in all, we feel very good about how our presentation went! And all in Spanish!