Buen día! Today concludes the halfway point of our first week in Tarragona, Catalonia. It was an eventful day that probably had more information and Spanish than any one of our previous Spanish classes combined. We started out meeting out
in our usual rooms and went over our Spanish lessons followed by a quick break while we waited for our Sanitation Workshop to begin.
The lesson began with some background information on how the healthcare system came to be in Spain including models that were followed in its initiation, followed by the pre- and post- Franco era and what the current day system looks like now. The biggest takeaway is how Spains healthcare is universal as long as you are a citizen of the country. Catalonia differs from the rest of Spain through some minor details but in the end, all citizen will be taken care of without any questions asked aside from showing our identification card issued by the country.
Once we got a brief run down of how things function we head over to the main event which featured Joan XXIII Hospital. There was an informative presentation about the hospital of Joan XXIII itself and how important this facility, along with many other in Catalonia, are to not only this region but Spain as a whole. We managed to tour much of the facility starting on the 4th-6th floor containing pediatrics, some intensive care beds, rehabilitation, a more general outpatient type of floor and ending in the emergency department. The amount of specialization that we saw in this hospital was quite remarkable and its easy to see why they have such high patient satisfaction rates!
As the day concluded, many of us split into smaller groups and walked around La Rambla. Eventually we all had stopped by Regine’s and had a quick bite before heading off to our host family’s homes. It was a fun day filled with tons of information which seemed like no matter how many times we talked about it, it just wasn’t getting any easier but our group made it really easy to keep moving forward!
Hasta la próxima!
Erick Ramírez