The hospital has been there since the 1960's and is run by the Daughters of Charity. It has 60 inpatient beds and a busy outpatient clinic. It also has a large program to train auxiliary nurses. I found myself relying a lot more on intuition than I would have at home. These young women are almost all indigenous and are the ones who do almost all of the nursing work in the hospital and also serve as translators.
Patients come with every imaginable type of medical problem.
There is a small medical staff comprised of a mixture of Mexican physicians and foreign volunteers. There are presently no surgeons or obstetricians and anything complicated has to be transferred to a hospital in the state capital, which is about four hours away by car. Also, the diagnostic testing capacity is fairly limited. The hospital tries its best to accommodate the special needs of its patients. Since most have to come from very far away and are very poor, the hospital allows family members to stay in the room with their sick relative.