Thanks to everyone!

After my presentation at ground rounds today, I formally thanked everyone in morning report. I wrote it out in English and then Spanish because I was worried I would forget to thank all the right people! I thought it would be fun to share with you all.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about my month here. First, thank you to the director of hospital, director of teaching, director of residents, and chief resident for your help in organizing this month long experience here. Second, I would like to thank all of the residents and staff that helped me feel so welcome here.

As many of you know, I am finishing up my medical training in Cleveland in the USA. I will be starting my residency in OBGYN this summer. In Cleveland, I learned how to speak medical Spanish from talking to my patients. Before starting my residency, I wanted an opportunity to improve my Spanish and put my medical knowledge into a clinical context in another country. Thank you for the opportunity to do all of this here.

I have been very impressed with so many things here at this hospital but would like to take a moment to recognize a few of these things. I want to make sure that you all know just how special the morning conference is! I was very impressed with the level of professionalism and content of morning report every day. The pathologies that you discussed everyday were incredible learning opportunities. I was very impressed with the education that takes place in the morning post-call and the dedication that everyone has in this room to learning and education. Every single case that was discussed was phenomenal and merited publication in a journal. I hope that you keep up the excellent impressive work!

I was also very impressed with the structure and organization of your hospital. There is a large inherent network of hierarchy in this hospital. Thank you to everyone for their help in explaining how the hierarchy worked here and I apologize if it took me too long to figure out how it worked! I found that the hierarchy was an excellent way of involving every person on the team in patient care. I also really liked how everyone respected the attendings and senior staff. I hope to bring knowledge of how well-organized a medical team can be to my residency program.

I have gained a huge amount of clinical experience here. Unfortunately, in the US a majority of my medical training relied heavily on technology. As a result, I never really learned how to be a clinician and really see, listen, and diagnose. Thank you for teaching me how to listen to fetal heart tones with a stethoscope – no one at home believes that it can be done without a Doppler! (I had to pause here because everyone in the conference laughed so much). Thank you for teaching me how to be a better clinician, how to rely on technology less and my clinical intuition more. Also, thank you for teaching me many new techniques for delivery babies and suturing because deliveries here are very different! (Another outburst of warm-hearted laughter).

I also wanted to thank you all for teaching me about Dominican life. I really enjoyed starting each day of work with a prayer as a hospital. I think that faith is something often overlooked, but it with our line of work, sometimes a little faith goes a long way in helping us become better physicians and better individuals. I also loved the warmth and generosity within the hospital. Thank you for introducing me to such a wonderful family of friends.

I was incredibly impressed with everyone that at this hospital. Every single person that I met was one of the best clinicians that I have ever seen. I am excited to return home to share all the new things I have learned here! Thank you for your patience with me and with my Spanish. I started off struggling to learn new medical words and then later realized that I could translate a 10 page ACOG article on polycystic ovarian syndrome without much effort. Thank you for teaching me so much! Thank you for everything. I am very grateful for this opportunity.