San Jose Well Child Visit - and a National Holiday for Children

by Salomon Payuma, MS-3

Today was a big day for the clinic. We had the well child visit for San Jose which is held in house of the “Hombro a Hombro Clinic” and is the most attended well child visit since its located in the clinic’s town. We set up our stations early in the morning as we were expecting a big crowd. A car with a loudspeaker went around town announcing the well child visit, which brought more attention to the event. It was also a national holiday for the children, which allowed more of them to come.

At around 8 am crowds started to show up. We had groups of students in the different stations including: 1. Height and weight, 2.Hemoglobin, 3.Physical exam, 4.Eye testing, 5.Pharmacy and 6. Dental Varnish. Medical students, residents, pharmacy student and residents and attending’s worked together to ensure all the children were seen and their needs taken care appropriately. It started slowly and by 9 am there was a huge line of patients waiting to be registered.

I was in charged of the eye station and we had a great time talking to the kids and figuring out which way was easier for them to identify the figures. We tried many strategies depending on their age. They were laughing most of the time, some were shy other very outgoing. Also they were smart and started learning the order of the figures so we had to switch around the order of the figures so we could continue to accurately test their vision. Sometimes also kids would give the answers to their friends.

Since we were close to the dental varnish station, we could see how the kids were not swallowing their fluoride but instead spitting it. We tried our best to educate them about the health benefits. We also helped with crowd control by directing kids that were already done with their checkup to go home. There was one particular kid who kept on bothering other kids and was disturbing our task. We took some time to talk to him and get him to help us see which kids were not swallowing their fluoride. This was he used his energy in a positive way.

We powered through the morning and very efficiently managed to see more than 170 kids by noon. Meanwhile, the clinic had the most attendance since we had gotten to Honduras. The rest of the healthcare team worked really hard to see all the patients.