"San José miners, the news of the year"

Maybe it was the news of the year all around the world, and also it was a tragedy for all Chilean people. I´m talking about the 33 miners who was trapped in the San José mine, during 70 days.

It was on august 5^th when 33 miners get trapped into San Jose mine. It was a tragedy for all people, because at first minutes, people didn´t know if miners were alive or not. For that reason, specialized people started to do a duct in the area where they supposed that miners where trapped.

It passed seventeen days till they were sure about the supposition, because the duct arrived to the shelter where the miners were trapped. The place was located at 700 meters of profundity, so the condition of life were not the best for human life, that´s why the people in charge immediately started to do things to help miners to be better inside the mine. For example, doctors did an anamnesis to know the health conditions of them, nutritionists made an especial diet, and some technics made an especial telephone to send to through the duct.

But more time had to pass till the miner´s rescue, because the machines had to make a duct bigger than the first one they did, one which the miners could pass to be rescued.
The rescue happened on October the 12^th, after more than 2 month of the tragedy, this day many cameras form different TV programs from all around the world were put on the miners rescue. I think that it was a very especial moment for all Chilean people, because they could follow the rescue by especial TV shows that were transmitted during all the process.

I really hope that these types of tragedies don´t happen again in the whole world, because I suppose that we learnt from this terrible process what the mines industry must to prevent.

English courses at the Medicine Faculty of the University of Chile

Introduction:

Today every job needs people who are competent in English, because of globalization. Today people are more connected all over the world, and the universal language is English, so the only way to be communicated or to be updated is with this language.

In the health system is very important to know how to talk in English for many reasons, like some books and articles are in English, or the patients can be from other country so is important to understand them, or because we need to travel to work in another country.

Body:

Today many Universities prepare people to work in a globalize world, teaching them the language of the word that is English. Universities offer exchanging with other universities from other countries, and also give articles in English to their students, and all of this is because the information is running so fast, from different parts of the word.

The Medicine Faculty form the University of Chile has some courses of English where students can learn the language in four different levels, the first one is started, then come beginner, the following is pre intermediate, and the last is intermediate.

For example, the Midwifery school from the Faculty, started with the English courses on 2009, with the first generation of the new curriculum of the School.

The English course started with a diagnosis test, and with those results people qualify on different levels of English. But in a course there are many differences between the English that knows one people than other, and this is a very good way to learn too, because students can help each other. Also the courses can be mixed with midwifery students and with physical therapy students or they can be separated, any way, the idea is to learn thing in English who will be helpful in our future as professionals. For example in the midwifery English course we learnt to do medical histories, questions for the patient, etc.

Conclusion:

English is a very important skill that people need to be a good health professional, in fact it helps a lot during the entire career, that’s why University of Chile offer English courses for some students, like those form the Midwifery School.

With this competition, students can study form update books, articles or papers like those who are in English. Also, a lot of doors are opening for students who want to learn more things about those careers abroad, or to work in another country.

Any way English is helpful for the entire life.

Myths and trues of the brain

There are many myths about how works our brain Works, but not all of them are true, so let’s review two typical myths:

Time ago, somebody exposed that we can study while sleeping, listening what we want to learn during the night. But it can´t work, because when you fall sleeping many of the brain connections get off, specially those who works with the sense organs like the audition, that’s why we don’t pay attention on the things that happened around us while sleeping.

Another important myth is that we can use only the 10 % of brain activities. But fortunately that isn´t true. To understand the reason, first we must to know that brain works with different sections, which have a specific function, for example the front of brain works on thinking activities, while the back of it works on watching, so it makes connections for each activity. But each parts works together at the same time, because at the same time we can be watching, thinking, and listening something, so there are 3 parts working, and making connections between them. That’s the reason because we use all brain functions and connections. The thing is, that we must stimulate the formation of those connections, beginning at babies till our last days of life, that’s why people get more capabilities than others, although all people use the 100 % of the brain functions.

It´s very important to know the true about the brain activities because we are going to work with people, so we must to know how their brains works, also we have to be informed about it.

Stress, the sickness of the XXI century.

It is more difficult to find somebody saying I am Ok than somebody saying I am stressed. It is an silence disease, because when you recognize on yourself its signals like weariness, repeated headaches, and more physicals and psychological signs you are completely stressed. My grandfather fall ill when he stopped working at 65 years old, this situation finally caused on him difficulties to walk, to speak, to eat : he was destroying himself and he didn’t realize. 5 years later, he had a cancer. Doctors explain that his stress was so aggressive that it caused problems with his cells .

When I was living in La Serena, some years ago, and came to visit my family in Santiago, I realized that here the streets, lights, the noise, etc, takes you in a ball called stress, and all of us were affected, but coming back and looking to the sea, believe me, it cleaned our minds.

Today I’m living in Santiago and I’m studying at University and I notice that the life is faster than some years ago, I think that it’s because we have more things to do specially at the university, where the classes, activities, tests, and works are hardly than ever in our childhood at school, also we have more responsibilities as adults.

To carry on a life like this, people recommends to do sports, yoga, Pilates, to eat fruit and vegetables and, in general to have a good style of life. But it’s really difficult!!! How can you do it if you have only a few hours of the day for yourself? I think that we have to learn a lot about how to carry on this desease.

Antenatal care at schools

The national institute for health and clinical excellence want´s that midwives goes to schools to advice and makes antenatal care controls to the teen age’s pregnant women. That´s because teen ages pregnancy is a big problem at the UK and because many girls have problems to go to their antenatal controls or they are afraid to tell to their parents about their pregnancy, so they don´t go to their antenatal controls. Another problem is at the deprive backgrounds, where the risk of still birth and baby dying in the six first weeks of life is twice than in teen ages women who goes to their antenatal controls.

This idea would help teen age´s pregnant women, to educate them about the right alimentation that they have to eat and about the risks of alcohol and Tabaco abuse. Also the antenatal controls would help to find typical pregnancy diseases like gestational diabetes, and pre-eclampsia.

Although all the profits of the antenatal care control on teen age’s pregnancy, there are some people who said that this system would normalize the teen age problem at schools, so they are not agree with the proposition.

Some people who apply the idea think that improving it, making some changes according to the needs of the society, like the teen age pregnancy prevention in areas with high teen age’s pregnancy rate, it would be better to the society.

Other people said that the system have to be focused in the way of education, and antenatal care in different groups, like teen ages centers, at schools, at GP surgeries, etc.

The general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives said that this system would need more staff and resources to be implementing. Nevertheless He is happy to know about this recommendation because is a step in the right direction to improve social problems like teen age pregnancy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/22/pregnancy-clinics-school

Chilean health system:

Different than France, Chile has two different health systems: the public and private systems. The public health is financed by 7% from user’s money (which is obligatory for both systems), and by FONASA who is an organization who works controling the public health system. The private one is in charge of ISAPRES who are financed by the 7 % from user’s money and, depending on the plan that you want to be, you can pay more money to have a best and more complete health service.

AUGE is a plan who wants to control all the rights of the people related with health at the public and private system, like access, financing, opportunity and quality for all the Chilean people.

But in my opinion, Chilean haven´t got equals rights related with health because the system is not the same in private and public system.

For example in Sicko we could see that in France the health system is equal for all French people, because they have free health all the days of the years, all day and whatever times they need it. Also the system function perfectly, they haven´t to wait more than an hour, and in Chile even the health is not free for all the people you have to wait sometimes days, weeks and months to be assisted by a doctor.

I think that Chile needs a better system, maybe like in France or England but at the same time I think that as a country we haven´t got money to improve it now, so my opinion for the solution comes from the formation of the Health professionals, and how they get their payment from public health system, then the system is going to grow up with better professionals and with more resources and in fact a better attention for the people.

Levonorgestrel a difficult topic:

Talk about levonorgestrel is very difficult, because I can listen many opinions and points of view about the pill of the day after, but I can´t say who have the reason, because I don´t investigate more about this topic so I can´t see the true by myself, also it isn’t a concerns about the use and the real function of this pill, in fact there are many theories about it.

This topic is very controversial because two reasons: One of them is that some people say that levonorgestrel is abortive. In my opinion, life begin when the zygote arrives to the uterus and happened the implantation, that´s why I think that levonorgestrel isn´t abortive, because it acts before the implantation by different ways like preventing the ovulation, preventing the union between sperm and egg, and it´s in discussion if the pill do something at the walls of the uterus.

And the other controversial topic is about the correct use of the pill which is used principally for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy, for example by sex abuses or for sex without protection, that’s why is so controversial, because some people thinks that the use of the pill will contribute to the libertinism, to the ITS, etc.

My point of view is that, the use of this type of pills have to be permitted, because everyone is free to do what they think better for their bodies and life, but always with responsibility, and that’s why is necessary to educate the Chilean people about the use of this pills. And that´s why is very important that midwives know about this topic, because we are the ones who have to educate the society about family planning, about many of their rights as persons and we have to help people to take good decisions about something as important as pregnancy.

My favorite film

GeneralIy I really love to watch movies, for that reason I have many favorites films like“The note book”, “Titanic”, “In the wild”, “The others”, “The pianist”, “Life is beautiful”, and many others. But today I want to talk about a film that I had watched recently, it calls “Griffin and Phoenix” or “Lección de vida”. This film is about two persons who met each other in a special class about death at the university. Both had a terminal cancer, but they never told it to the other, then they had a date together where they passed a very nice night.

They started to have a lot of confidence between each other, and they passed very nice moments together so finally they felt in love, but with it they realized that both had a terminal cancer, so they decided to live their last days of life as they were kids, making a lot of crazy things, enjoying every minutes of life.

At the end of the movie they started to feel bad, because death started to be near of their lives. But till the end they tried to be as better as possible in order to enjoy their love and their last moments of life.

I liked very much this movie because it´s a very beautiful love story that left an important lesson of life, it is that we have to live every moment as the last one. Sometimes we are very close doing our things, and we can´t look at the beautiful things of life, and that is what we have to improve, because in that way we are going to be happier than now.

Blogging:

When I knew that we had to do a blog for English class, I though that it would be funny. And it has been more than fun, because it was interesting and useful too. I learnt a lot of grammar and fluency, my write is much better than before, at the beginning of the year.

We wrote about many topics, but now I’m going to give an opinion about my favourite’s one:

The second post was one of my favourite, because we wrote about the earthquake, and it was very interesting to know how it was to the other people, like different experiences of the catastrophe.

The third one was about our favourite website, it was very difficult to write it, because I hadn’t a favourite one, so I had to investigate about a website related with obstetrics, then I found one, and it was very interesting to read it, finally I really like this post.

The next blog I liked it was about our career. I think it was very funny to write about it, because I remembered the last year at school when I took the option to study midwifery at the University of Chile. This blog was very inspiring, because in my opinion this topic is very personal.

Then I wrote about our future as midwifes, It was beautiful too, because I dreamed a lot, but at the same time I saw it like real and near future, like study abroad something related with obstetrics.

The last post was free, but it was very special for me, because I wrote about my pet, who is very important for me, so it was very difficult to write it because it was very sensible to me.

In my opinion, Blogging was a very good idea to improve our grammar and fluency. Also it was very interesting to read my friend’s opinions. But on the another hand I think it takes a lot of time doing it at home, so a way to improve it can be doing it at English class.

Samantha, my pet and sister

I have always loved animals, especially dogs. When I was a child I hadn’t got any pet, because my Dad didn’t like them. But my Grandmom had a dog called Frida, she was a very good and faithful dachshund, I loved her so much, then my Grand mom told us that Frida could be our dog while we were at her house.

When I was ten years all, my Dad decided to give a dog for my Mother’s birthday. The day Samantha arrived to our house, I think it was one of the most beautiful days of my life.

Samantha was a very little Cocker Spaniel, with a beautiful hair color, with big and curly ears…. We loved her at first moment we saw her.

First we thought that cocker could be a little bit complicated because of their typical character, but Samantha was especial, she has never caused any disorder, she is very calm, also when she arrived to the house she knew that she had to pee outside at the grass. So she always was a lady, that’s why sometimes we think that Samantha isn’t a dog. In fact, she has always been pampered, that´s why she started to dark when she was one year old and they normally do it at 6 month of life.

When she grew up she started to show us her personality. For example she doesn’t like to be alone, so she always walks behind of us. She like to eat human food mixed with her especial food, and at the morning she loves to drink a little of milk or yoghurt, she loves to sleep in her bed, which must be a special one, very softly and hot.

I really love her, I always be hugging and kissing her, but she doesn´t like it very much, maybe I´m a little bit annoyed, but I hope that she knows that it´s because I love her.

Now Samantha is 12 years old, she is very old, now she doesn´t listen, she sleeps many hours per day, and she plays only a little, but she still looks very sweet and beautiful, and I am sure that she is very happy living with us.

Who doesn’t like to travel on holidays?

In my opinion holidays are the best thing in life, because I can travel, and I love to do it.

I have travelled many times with my family through Chile, and a couple of times to Argentina. Also I travelled to Brazil by my school trip, which it was on winter vacations some years ago.

Well, when I travel with my family it´s very funny, because we do it by car, so nobody tell us where we have to go. For that reason our trips are like an adventure for us, and my Dad love it!

For example, one day my Dad said that he wanted to know a route that was through the mountain, so we did it, but it was terrible because the way was so narrow, so the car was very close to the ravine. I remember that there were old bridges by wood, and when the care passed over them it creak very stronger.

It didn’t happen only once, all trips we do have different adventures. First time I thought I was in danger, I felt very scared, but I saw my Dad´s face and all the time he was very happy and calm, so now I always look at his face and I try to enjoy the trips like he does.

The last big trip was on 2006, and we went to South of Chile, to Bariloche and then to San martin de los Andes in Argentina too. And of course we do it by car. It was amazing! I knew so beautiful and different places. I remember that it was winter so it was very cold, especially in Bariloche, and it was windy too, so we went to buy many chocolates and we ate a lot of Medias Lunas.

The next trip that we want to do is to The Austral way, by car so I hope we can do it this year or the next, I really want to travel with my family like we did it some years ago.

Prevention and health promotion by a Midwife

We have a very important role related with prevention, because midwives works at many health areas, like hospitals and primary care centre; in many cases we have to assist the same family during all their lives. For that reason we must to promote the education individuals, in families and communities. In the way of the education we can prevent a lot of diseases.

At the primary care centre always comes pregnant women for their prenatal control, there we have to do many educations related with nutrition during pregnancy or educations related with newborn care, bond, etc. When we begin this type of educations, individually, we have to do it at box and explain them all the topics, it calls counselling. Another way is that pregnant goes to practice activities with other women where midwives teach them about lactation for example.

As we know, midwives works with women during all their life, so in many occasions it is very important to work with the family promoting good styles of life, nutrition, relationships in the family, preventing sedentary, etc. One activity where we need all the family is when we want to promote the early stimulation for the fetus, and while we do it we promote the bond between the family and the baby, we can do it with a practice activity.

Another way to do education is in the communities where we have to educate about good styles of life, like safe sexuality, nutrition, drugs, tobacco, etc. But this type of intervention is different, because we have to go to the community and do activities related with those specific necessities and interestings, because the idea is that people feel identify with the activity in order to be interesting for them. In that way we are going to teach them and prevent diseases. We can do activities like football, to promote the physical activities, and prevent the sedentary, or activities that promote good use of the preservative, where people learn to use it with practice activities, preventing the sexually transmitted disease.

As midwives we are very close of the people trough many important process, especially with women, so is very important to promote healthy lifestyles, because in this way we can prevent a lot of diseases, bringing them a better kind of life .

Gender problems in my career:

The gender problems are present at the health careers, especially in nursery and midwifery.
I don´t know if gender problems happens in other countries. But I think that it depends on the culture. For example, in countries where people are more reserved, the gender probably could be a problem, especially in midwifery.
In Chile, when obstetrics and puericulture appeared, all the students were girls. But this situation has been changed, because each year comes to study more men to this career.
I think that be a man-midwife have profits related with the relationship between women and professional. This is because generally women feels more confidence or security with men than with women and because women usually think that men don´t know about the women´s pains so they work carefully.
I don´t know if those feelings and thoughts are true or not, but many times it helps women to be assisted in a better way according their necessities during their process.
To reduce the gender problem in midwifery, we have to include men in our job, recognizing their capacities working with women, because in the practice they shows a really good relationship with their patients, in fact, many women feels comfortable after been assisted by a man.

My future as a midwife:

When I´ll finish my career I will study something related with midwifery, like a graduate course in neonatology. My idea is to study abroad, because I think that is necessary to know other people’s views of the profession. For example I know that some midwives of the Midwifery School of the Medicine Faculty from the Universidad de Chile went to study to Belgium, other went to Sweden, etc. I especially like the option to study in Europe, because my Grandmother is Belgian so I want to know this place and their customs, so what better than going to study there and doing what I like.

The other topic that I find interesting is the humanized born, so I would like to work on this too. But I think that I have to know more about that. At the anthropology class I learnt about some kind of midwifes calls Doulas; they are who support the mothers during the humanized born. To be a Doula I have to study abroad too, but I don’t know about the possible countries yet.

After this, I want to work in a Public hospital, because I know that people needs a good kind of health care and they also needs good professionals to trust on for their own care and for their newborns care too.

My first option at the career list

When I was at school, I wanted to study Medicine, and after it, I thought to be specializing in pediatrics and neonatology. My second option was midwifery, because it´s very related with neonatology, but I thought that my first option was more complete than only midwifery.

But my PSU score wasn´t enough for Medicine, so I decided to study Midwifery. But my feelings wasn’t negative about my decision, because Midwifery was something that I wanted and it´s very beautiful too, also I thought that : if I don´t liked it, I should try again with the PSU next year. In general my thought was “All happens for something in life”.

During this two years I am sure that what I thought it wasn´t an error. Now I think that seven years of Medicine and two or four years studying specific areas, are too much between five years of midwifery doing what I really love. Also, after the career I can be specializing in neonatology too.

Today I am in love with my career, because all what we do is assist people in their good or physiological conditions, and I think that this work is very important to the people because we are the ones who have to be with the family supporting them during all their lives, living many situations with them.

I really love this career, because I like to assist people with those beautiful processes of life, like gestation, born and lactation. Also I love babies so I´m very happy to assist them in their first days of life.

For all of this if I should have to choose again for any career, obviously midwifery should be my first option.

"My Favourite Website"

I don´t visit a specific website, but now I found one that I liked so much. It is www.nuestroparto.cl. It means "our delivery".

In this website you can find many interesting things about the humanized delivery. It has many sections, where you can find information like: what is humanized delivery, questions about delivery, videos, testimonies, scientific evidences about the profit of humanized delivery, comments and links for another websites about the humanized delivery .

The objectives of this page is make conscience about the profits of the humanized delivery to the mother and newborn, so they say "for our rights to choose", because many people don´t know about this profits so they can´t choose what they really want for theirs deliveries.

Well, as I said before, it´s the first time that I visit this website, but now, I think that I´m going to visit it more often, because I really like it.

I like this website because I think that the humanized delivery is a very beautiful process that brings many profits. Besides, we have to know that this is a natural process, so we have to think that many people lived it before that the medicine participates in it. So now, as a midwives, we have to have respect with the delivery, because it´s a personal process between mother and newborn, and maybe with the father too. All the information related with this, it is located in the website with scientific evidences, for that reason I think that it´s very interesting.

Obviously, I recommend this website to all my Friends, especially to my classmates, who are going to be midwives.

How I lived earthquake

The night of earthquake I went to bed very late, because I was watching Viña del Mar Festival at the TV.
I slept one hour, when suddenly my bed started to move on, and obviously I woke up with the movement, but I thoght that it would stop, but it didn`t. So I put on my slippers and my sweater as faster I can, then the earthquake started to move very strong so I went to wake up my little brother who was sleeping, I pulled his arm till he was asleep, then my Mom started to shout that we had to go down stairs with the rest of the family. When we were at the stairs it was imposible to continued so my Dad helped us takeing by our arms. Then we stayed together till the earthquake stoped. While it happened I listened many different and horrible sounds. I was really scared.
When everything stoped, I felt so nevous because of the situation. My Dad decided to go to my grandparent´s house, because they live near us, and while he was there the first reply of earthquake started to move the house again.
The rest of the night we stayed together triying to sleep on my parent`s bed.
We was without ligt 5 days, but my neighbours had it so they helped us with energy for the frizzer.
I felt very extrange for many days after earthquake, my sensation was scare and insecure.
Notwithstanding, I`m very grateful because all my family is good, and nothing terrible happened to us.

Me

Hello everybody my name is Daniela, I´m studying obstetrics at the University of Chile, at the Medicine Faculty. I´m in the second year, so I´m learning more things related with the career. In fact on the second term we have to practise all that we are learning now, but in the hospital, with real patients so I´m very exiting for that.

This blog is for the English class, the objectives is to be more connected with my English partners and with the teacher. I want to share experiences with all them, and I think that they want the same of me.

I hope this blog help us to know more about us. See you there.