I worked at a small clinic in Nha Trang, Vietnam for several weeks during medical school. Though I use the term “worked” loosely. More like quietly observed and learned…
We sat in that tiny room for hours on end, seeing multiple patients at once. There were two assistants who collected the vital signs and drew up meds on one side of the room, and the physician, his brother, who served as both pharmacist and ECG technician, and me on the other. And outside a long line of patients waiting to be seen. Most of them came with chronic problems like hypertension, diabetes, and arthritis — typical ailments in any doctor’s office in the US.
The physician must have been in his late sixties, having received his medical training in Vietnam when the French still occupied the country. He had a cheerful temperment and liked to laugh at my poor Vietnamese grammar, thick American accent, and improper pronunciation of medical jargon. To my defense, words like blood pressure, lungs, and kidney were not commonly used at home when I was growing up. But since all I could offer was barely four years of medical school education, I was happy to provide amusement for the day.
