A Day in the Life of a Global Health Intern in Portugal

7:00 a.m. up and out of bed to get ready for the day. Shower and get dressed. On the way out the door make sure you have your bus pass and ID card for the hospital. Also, have to make sure I am dressed to impress because most of the doctors dress very nicely. Nothing over the top but a button down tucked in with nice shoes. Out the door by 7:30.

7:35 a.m. arrive at the bakery down the street where we have breakfast everyday. We get a sandwich (ham and butter on bread) with suicide and then a pastry. Honestly, it is an amazing breakfast. My favorite pastry is of course the travesseiro which is like this flakey peanut butter filled fluffy thing. We have to pay attention to the time because the bus comes at 8:08 and in order to get there before 8:30 we can not miss this bus! So ten minutes before we are waiting at the bus stop which is located right outside the bakery. Ten minutes early in case it gets there early.

8:08 a.m. we get on the bus and arrive at the hospital by 8:25 which is just enough time to run to the basement and grab our lab coats out of out lockers and head each to out specialty for that day.

8:30 a.m. we are meeting up with the doctors at a location that was predetermined the day before. From there it is up to the doctor what exactly happens. Sometimes finding the doctor isn't as simple as meeting where you were suppose to. Often they are late or you are meeting up with a different doctor that wasn't there the day before and things can easily go astray. However, Diogo, the HR guy at the hospital, is very helpful in making sure that everything is set up and ready to go with the doctors and if there was every a problem he was there to help. At the hospital we are located at the doctors were very nice and willing to let us shadow them but I heard that it is much more common to have problems working with the doctors and getting them to let you shadow them. I ran into this problem once but it was quickly resolved.

8:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. is the full five hours we are supposed to be there. In that time a lot can happen. Depending on the specialty and how specialized the hospital is in that area will greatly determine what you end up doing with the doctors. Fro example, I wanted to shadow neurology because I find it very interesting but this hospital does not specialize at all in this area so all the doctors do are consultations which is super boring when 80% of them are just patient who need an ongoing medication. So I found things like anesthesia and ENT, areas the hospital specializes in, to be much more interesting and fun.

1:30 p.m. is when we usually leave and set up a time and place for the next day with the doctor. We than usually ate lunch at the hospital cafeteria because we got a discount and it was just super cheap. After that, we would catch a bus home and depending on the weather do whatever we wanted.

Through this program we have dinner with our site manager every other day which is awesome because they are very good dinners. Nothing cheap and always a great way to experience more of the culture. My current site manager is amazing and always there at any moment. He also knows the area well so takes us to these awesome restaurants. Every friday we also go on an excursion paid for by the program and lead by our site manager which is always awesome. Since he is from there he knows all the best places to go and can really make exploring a city fun and easy.

Other than that I went to the gym to workout, we would go to the city center for dinner when the program didn't provide dinner for us and we would also often go to this amazing ice cream place. Luckily for us everything is within walking distance so we walked a lot but it was good being able to explore the city of Cascais. We would also go the the beach when it was warm which was always fun. Overall, my experience with this program has been amazing. All of my expectations have been exceeded and I would highly recommend the Atlantis Project to anyone.

Word Count: 781