Rita Semaan

Report of Experience

During my exploration in the hospital, I first learned that not

everything goes perfectly as planned. If a typical doctor were to come

into work with an organized list of appointments with about thirty

patients to be seen, he or she would see approximately all thirty of

them. Unfortunately that is not the case at St. Chris. On average, only

ten of those patients would be seen that day. In effect to the hospitals

location in the city, many of the families who do visit are relatively low

on the scale of economic stability. Many factors play a large role in

holding back parents from allowing their children to received standard

care. Parents either lack the ability to receive transportation to the

hospital, cannot take off of work or do not speak English. All three

factors are the main reasons as to why most children are incapable of

attending all of their scheduled appointments with health care

professional in such areas of North Philadelphia.

Every day, at least two patients were incapable of speaking

English. Most families spoke either Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. None

of the pediatric orthopedic doctors or students are able to speak either

languages and only two of the medical assistants are able to speak

Spanish. With cases in which the medical assistants were too busy, the

doctors would call a medical translator company in order to

communicate with the children and their families. This lack of

communication is a setback that stops families from taking their

children to the hospital. Parents tend to feel uncomfortable and

isolated by being in a place in which they cannot speak to anyone else

but their child.

Upon my arrival on the first day, Dr. Gresh was preparing for a

surgery on a thirteen-year-old boy at noon. I was very excited to step

into the surgical room to watch a procedure done on a child. It was

scheduled that Dr. Gresh would take out the titanium rods that were

placed in the boys right and left femurs. It was half past twelve and it

was decided that the patient was not going to show up for his surgery.

We were notified that the mother disregarded the appointment and

took it upon herself that the boy did not need to get the rods surgically

removed since she was incapable of taking off from work to be there

with her son. From what Dr. Gresh told me, I learned that the longer the

thirteen year old waits to have the surgery, the more pain he would be

in and his risk for infection significantly increases.