Reflections by Dave Bress

Today we went to a regional hospital in Alajuela named San Rafael de Alajuela Hospital. This is the main hospital for cases of Ebola due to it’s location near the Juan Santa Maria Airport. Ebola is thought to be a threat to Costa Rica due to the large number of tourists and its location between North and South America. The hospital has 36 specialties and helps over half a million people each year, which is one eighth of the population of Costa Rica. San Rafael consists of three departments: emergency department, hospital treatment for short stay, and external consultation, which is used to refer a patient to a specialist outside of the hospital. Most rooms of the hospital consist of six beds, with a total of 280 beds. Approximately 30-35 surgeries are scheduled each day of the work week, not including emergency surgeries. The seven operating rooms and two recovery rooms of the hospital are heavily utilized. Personally, I thought that it was amazing that the waiting room on the first floor of the hospital had many seats (over 150 seats) available for patients. A hospital administrator of San Rafael was our docent who told us that the waiting room is commonly used only between 7am-3pm, and we noticed around 4pm it was nearly empty. The butterfly garden was beautiful and allowed people to visit who are visitors and patients to breathe the fresh air of Alajuela, Costa Rica.