I know the most common image people have of the Mexican Red Cross is the dedicated people standing by the side of the road collecting donations. As a matter of fact, a handful of people teased me before I left asking me if I brought plenty of sunscreen because that's what I was going to be doing.

As luck has it, I arrived here during the two hardest hitting months of collection for the Red Cross: March and April. When I asked, the head of the clinic here said that for this specific clinic in Hermosillo, we need approximately 15 million pesos (1 million dollars) to operate for the year. Donations come in the forms of large checks from local businesses, obviously donations from the people, and lastly when people go to renew their car registration here with the government, they are asked if they want to make a voluntary donation to the Red Cross. 

Additionally, this year the Carlos Slim foundation donated 14.8 million pesos, an ambulance and 663 computers to the national organization in recognition of the indispensable and invaluable work the Red Cross organization does for this country. For anyone curious, Carlos Slim is a Mexican business magnate and investor who is the chairperson of Telmex and is worth $71.2 billion USD. In addition to the monetary donation, Telmex has pledged to match every peso donated by texting a certain number. I believe this outstanding support from businesses and the public shows how vital the Red Cross' work is in Mexico.

The moat on my way to work today.

Donation from a civil administration of the exports industry.

With poor water removal, the streets remain flooded for several days after a storm.

Sonora style enchiladas

A relatively small pothole...

A quick break in San Carlos with friends for the long weekend. 

Hello! It has been a while since I have posted, so I have lots to catch you all up on.

As I previously stated, I created an Excel spreadsheet which acts as a digital archive of all of the patients the specialist doctors have treated since January 2014. This archive includes the patients full name, their phone numbers, the doctor who attended them and their specialty, and finally whether they are a recurrent patient and the date of their last appointment. Additionally, I included the patients area of residency to try and focus fundraising efforts based on sociogeographical information. To be extra thorough, I sifted through the receptionist's books to match any names with phone numbers. This archive has over 1,000 patients and I hope that the staff continues to update this Excel spreadsheet as it is a convenient way to look up contact information. By Mexican federal law, I was not allowed to archive patient information of the general doctors here in the clinic so with their limited time off, they continue to add their own patient information.

My next project is to create an inventory of the medical equipment and infrastructure we have in the specialist's clinics and to label whether this equipment belongs to the doctors or the Red Cross. I will compare what we have here in the clinic to what is mandated by Federal Regulation and create a list of tools needed by each doctor for a better practice. Next, I will draft an email to organizations such as Project C.U.R.E.and InterVol, Recycling of Unused Medical Supplies, which collect medical supplies and equipment and donates to non-profit charities. I hope that our connection with the American Red Cross will facilitate this process.

With a little more than two weeks left here with my SRP, I am starting to realize how much I will miss the beautiful culture and people here. The solution? Indulge as much as I can before I leave!

More updates to come..

The view from one of the mountains surrounding the city.

A portrait in the entrance of the clinic.

All patient files of the Red Cross. As you can see, there aren't many.

During this time of year, bugambilias are everywhere you look. 

The view from a local prison-turned museum. On the adjacent hill, "Jesucristo Viene" or "Jesus Christ is Coming."

With my free time, I have been working nonstop as a chauffeur for my abuela. This job is good because it gets me out of the house and also has helped me learn the streets of Hermosillo, but goodness gracious I cannot possibly keep track of all of the bookstores we have been too. Additionally, as someone who suffers from narcolepsy, my abuela has asked me several times to go grocery shopping with her at times past midnight. However, this is not a complaint. Usually we go out to eat whenever we are in the streets so it's a fair deal.

#selfie

My abuelo just returned from a week at our cattle ranch which is about 5 hours away near Cananea, Sonora. Now that he is back I'm likely to be even more busy going on errands and constantly back and forth to the mechanic.

Hello! The high for today was 93 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning that it is now summer in Hermosillo.

This last week I have been working with my adviser, Paulina, on creating a new patient registration sheet. The previous format they had for patients was elementary, comprised solely of "Reason for the Visit" "Allergies/Previous Illnesses" and measurement of vital signs. This new registration we made is much more thorough and also complies with the Standard Clinical File of the Diario Oficial de la Federación. Moreover, in addition to the general practitioner patient registration sheet we made specified formats for the dentist, nutrologist, and psychologist. After reading pages upon pages about the standard clinical file, my adviser and I were able to compose a more professional patient file.

In addition to completing this patient registration sheet, I began the tedious progress of filing previous patient files into excel. In the hope of greater communication post-medical attention and for contact during fundraising months, I have been tasked with writing down the phone numbers, emails and neighborhoods of previous patients. This electronic archive will aid in keeping in touch with patients and also better focus the Red Cross' fundraising efforts based on geographic location of patients.

My new assignment for this week, in addition to keep working on the electronic archive, is to research what information is needed on a patient registration file for an ophthalmologist and dermatologist.

http://dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5272787&fecha=15/10/2012 

25 ambulances working out of the clinic

Tacos with shredded beef

Tacos de pescado

And now, a little look in to driving in Hermosillo! I was fortunate enough to drive my own car down, a 1994 Isuzu Trooper, and only experienced the air conditioning stop working for about one hour on the five hour long drive down.

The streets of Hermosillo were not built to provide for the large number of people now living in the city, and this is seen by almost all roads covered in large potholes or cracks. There is a saying here that at night, police don't pay any attention to drivers swerving on the road but instead choose to pull over people who drive straight down the road, not avoiding any of the many obstacles. In addition, people constantly drive with their emergency lights on--no idea why. There are painted lanes on a few of the largest roads of the city, but they really don't mean anything. It's important to be a very defensive driver because it is common that in order to avoid a car that may be making a turn or driving too slow, a driver will run into you and drive off like nothing happened. Furthermore, the speed limits mean nothing. Some of the largest boulevards in the city randomly change from 60 km/h to 20 km/h without any warning; the good news is my car doesn't have the slightly smaller speedometer in km/h so I can ignore the signs with good conscience.

Without fail, at every intersection there is a stop sign. You are allowed to ignore the stop sign if the light is green unless there is a cop who is having a bad day, then he can pull you over for running the stop sign. Additionally, you can spend time in jail for small traffic infringements; I'm thinking if I'm pulled over here I will only speak English and try to play the naive foreigner card.

For now, I'm delighted to say that I have not been involved in any accidents, pulled over, or had my car stolen. Hopefully none of that will change!

On my way to work. Also, buses do not give a damn about anyone.

This week I have exciting news! After multiple meetings with my adviser, we both decided it would be more beneficial and impacting for me to change focus of my SRP, fulfilling a more administrative role in the Red Cross. Before, I was planning to participate in a multitude of different volunteer roles within the organization to understand the work the Red Cross does across the state of Sonora. For example, I was planning to work in the office helping respond to calls, work in the countryside distributing aid packages, and shadow first aid workers in emergency vehicles. This work certainly would have been interesting, but it seemed to unfocused and disorderly. 

I now plan to work in the largest clinic in Hermosillo, located on Blvd. Luis Encinas, helping the head of administration Paulina Corona. The Red Cross is one of the largest medical aid providers in the country but with all this work, they have not had the proper time or resources to develop a good way of organizing information pertaining to their patients or doctors. Part of my new task is creating a template for patient registration and retention to organize and store information for patient files. The clinic I am working in offers many specialist doctors in addition to a general practitioner so I will also be helping create patient registration sheets for specific doctors, for example the information asked by a gynecologist will be different from that of a dentist. Finally, I will be helping to better plan and schedule the hours of availability of certain doctors who volunteer their time in the clinic for only a few hours a week to make the most of that valuable time and lastly will attempt to track the most busy hours of the week to better manage our allocation of resources.

I believe my reassignment will prove more beneficial in the long run to not only the organization, but myself. It will be rewarding to be involved in building a steady infrastructure for this organization in order to help them provide even more good to their patients.

                 

The official commencement of my project.

Also known as 911.

Hermosillo, Sonora

It's customary to eat tacos the first night. To anyone who's curious, the tacos were of slowly roasted marinated pork and fresh cheese on a flour tortilla.

Hello! My name is Alejandro Durazo and I am a senior at BASIS Tucson North, class of 2015. Students at our school have an accelerated curriculum highly saturated with Advanced Placement exams so that technically they are eligible to graduate junior year or participate in a final year that is far from normal. The first two trimesters of senior year focus on college applications and supplemental essays while our third trimester we are encouraged to create a research project to occupy our time for the remaining three months.

I decided to spend my new amount of free time away from school in Hermosillo, Sonora volunteering for the Mexican Red Cross. During my stay, I will be volunteering in a multitude of roles in the organization to ascertain a sense of the work done across the state of Sonora. My onsite advisers are Lic. Carlos Freaner Figueroa and Lic. Adrián Camou Loera.

The Red Cross here in Mexico does a tremendous job of providing reliable medical attention, all not for profit, and I wish to shine some light on the people who make that possible!

I am very grateful for this opportunity our school provides to conduct this senior research project (SRP) and look forward to my work with the Red Cross.

Thank you for reading, please feel free to leave comments.