Rachel Hurley- Global Medcats

Aug. 1, 2022
Image
Hurley smiling

This summer I participated in the Global Medcats study abroad trip. I travelled to the
small town of Mérida, Spain, where I spent four days a week shadowing doctors in a hospital
and spent my weekends traveling throughout Spain and Portugal. Upon my arrival in Spain, I met 12 other women partaking in the study abroad trip who would soon become some of my closest friends. Together, we became accustomed to Spanish culture and lifestyle. We ate tapas for dinner at 10 pm, explored the Roman ruins in Mérida, and often partook in siestas in the afternoon. We took advantage of cheap trains and planes to travel to Seville, Mallorca, Madrid, and Lisbon on our three-day weekends. While at the hospital, I was assigned a different specialty to shadow each week. First, I saw anesthesiology, then OBGYN, then ENT, cardiology, and lastly, pediatrics. This experience allowed me to explore the differences between doctors and healthcare in the United States and Spain and view the benefits and consequences of free healthcare firsthand. Doctors in the hospital spoke limited English, if any, so this was a great opportunity to improve my Spanish. Even after the first week, my ability to understand Spanish was drastically improved. The doctors took me under their wing—they took me to breakfast in the café in the morning where we discussed the patients for the day, gave me quick lessons on their specialty, and would engagingly demonstrate and explain the patient interactions I witnessed. This trip displayed the mellow resident-attending dynamic, the impressive speed at which doctors saw patients, the different technology the hospital used, the blunt approach taken to conversing with patients, and their excitement to teach their passion to others, which are things I have noted to be different than my prior experiences in US healthcare systems. I learned so much about Spanish culture and have become noticeably more confident. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity and would encourage all to go abroad if given the chance!

Image
Rachel smiling

Image
Rachel and her peers

Image
Rachel and her group