el Hospital Militar

David has connections everywhere and arranged another visit for us on Wednesday, to the Military Hospital. We powered through a hard-charging hour's tour in the wake of a portly Air Force colonel, the hospital's head of personnel.

The hospital is another beautiful early 20th c. building, in need of some repair. The main building has high arched windows with panes of blue glass in the arches and the initials HM in beautiful blood red script on the keystone pane. There is a little museum of old hospital porcelain plates and enema bottles.


The colonel bustled us along, speaking mostly in Spanish and switching to English when I got hopelessly lost. We toured the maternity ward, the children's ward, the cardiac ICU, a stepdown unit, the emergency room, the dialysis unit, hydrotherapy & physical therapy rooms. There is not (or at least the colonel did not observe) anything like the HIPAA restrictions that aim to protect patient privacy in the States. At one point he grabbed a patient's chart and started flipping through it to show me. Another time we stood for 5 minutes talking about computerization of medical records in front of a screen filled with patient information.


The hospital is run for members of the military and their families, and also admits members of the government. Most if not all of the medical staff are in the military -- nurses oversee the nursing units and are officers, while most of the hands-on nursing work is done by enlisted enfermeros or enfermeras. Nurses here still wear white caps and are called nurse. There were soldiers posted everywhere, snapping smart salutes to our guide.


I went through the adjacent nursing school as well, accompanied by a lovely nurse named Cristina. She explained their different programs including a combat nursing program. Meanwhile, the colonel regaled Mike with stories of his time as part of a UN deployment to Africa during which he suddenly found himself promoted from observer to head of air operations. Someone had found out that he was in the Air Force back home. His quote when he found out that Tom flies jets: "I hate this guy. Tell him to send me one. No, two."