One of my favorite books

Last summer I read a very interesting book called “The Cow”. My first thought was: that is a weird name for a book. It doesn’t tell me anything about it. It is a too simple name. I bet it’s a great book… that caught my attention so I decided to read it.
The main purpose of this book is teaching the readers how they can eliminate or destroy all the cows that they have in their lives. "Everybody has cows, including me. However, the most of the time we don't notice them", said the author.
Maybe you’ll wonder what cow must be eliminated if you don’t have one. Probably you even have a dog or a cat! Well, in this context a cow means every excuse, habit or belief which don't let us progress and keep us stuck in mediocrity. Camilo Cruz, the author of this book, argues that the worst enemy of success is conformism. In order to exemplify his ideas, he shares a short story told by someone while he was in a flight.
The Cow’ story is about a very poor family who lived in lousy conditions in a small house. Sometimes they had nothing to eat. The only one possession they had were a weak and skinny cow. When they had any money they spent it on food for their cow. They barely could obtain some milk of it. But, that was better than nothing.
Certain day, they noticed their cow was dead. Someone killed it.
Apparently this seems tragic, the worst thing that could ever happen to this family. However, they were forced to do something for themselves.
They grew vegetables to feed themselves. Then, they thought they could sell them in the market.
Now, they always have food. They have a nice house, and everybody in the family is happy.

The blog experience

Today I’m going to write the last post in my blog, at least for this semester!
In my point of view, write in this blog was a difficult experience, because think and write in English is a very complicated activity. I think my English skills have improved, my vocabulary has increased and also my pronunciation is better writing about different topics every week.
I can deny that sometimes I really hated this blog, because I spent many hours come up with new ideas, in order to create a good work related to the required subject. The class was never enough time for me to finish it.
Well, enough for criticisms. Now, the bright side of this assignment…
Currently I feel more confident when I write and speak in this language. I think that create this blog was a remarkable experience because is a good and effective way to learn.
In addition, this activity contributed that we know each other a little bit more, as a classmates, because we have to do three comments at least in the other classmates’ blogs.
During this semester, I had to write about several topics, which were very interesting: my experience with the earthquake, a career-related website, my opinion about what I’m going to do when I become a midwife, if there are gender problems in midwifery, mention different ways that may help to educate and prevent individuals, families and communities.
When I developed the ideas to write about every subject I had the opportunity to think in my own future, as a student and as a midwife, what I will have to face up when my studies end.
In conclusion, create this blog was a great activity which helped me in this curse to achive an improvement in this languaje.

Education and prevention in midwifery

Health area careers are mainly oriented and concerned about people care. There are several ways to achieve this difficult work, however there are two of these which are very interesting: educate and prevent.
In midwifery, education and prevention are essential topics. These strategies are used to accomplish health promotion, which implies to understand that health depends on a lot of different factors such as social, environmental, economic and politic; all of them focused on individuals, family and community.
Educate is a complex process which involve transmission, recreation, creation and knowledge capture in order to health preservation. Thus, we are be able to prevent appearance of diseases and controlling risk factors that may hinder in develop of a healthy life and even conduce to a premature death. Prevention is very important in policies formulation and health activities orientation.
Midwives, especially in primary care centers, have the opportunity to intervene in a community through education projects, using the education as a tool to get health reestablishing, due to in these places exist a closer contact with the patients.
As a future midwife, I’m going to mention five different ways that may help educate individuals, families or communities, in health terms:

1. Give information about how to have a responsible sexual life, which consider use of contraceptive methods to prevent an unexpected pregnancy or a Sexually Transmitted Disease.
2. Promote healthy lifestyles which include doing frequent exercise (at least three times a week), and having good alimentary habits. They may diminish fats consume and increase vegetables and fruits consume.
3. In families, mothers are key figures; therefore if I educate them I might suppose that their families will also be informed. That’s why they are an interesting focus group to intervene in any ambit.
4. Promote early detection of any kind of disease as the best way to be and remaining healthy.
5. Create commitment in patients because they are the only persons who are responsible for their health.

Gender problems in midwifery

Hi everyone!! Today I’m going to talk about gender problems.
A gender problem referred to a specific work area is related to any kind of discrimination suffered by a workers group due to form the minority. Midwifery is a good example of that. This is a career studied mainly by women therefore men make up the minority group. However, the discrimination which experiment male midwives isn’t precisely done by their colleagues, but some patients who they have attended. Sometimes female patients say they feel embarrassed when male midwives do them a physical examination. They do not feel comfortable.
In nursery happens the same situation. There are more female nurses than male nurses hence, in my point of view, they feel just like male midwives.
I don’t know if gender issues among health workers occur in other countries but I think it does.
A long time ago I saw a movie called “Meet the parents” (La familia de mi novia). In this movie, the main character was a male nurse who met her fiancé’s family and he had to stand for their mocking due to his profession.

My future as a midwife

When I become a midwife, what am I going to do? Which area I would like to work? Will my expectations come true? It is kind of difficult to give an accurate answer for those questions...Probably it might be because I am just beginning in this career and there are a lot of things I do not know yet. However, at this moment I’m very interested in a few career-related topics: public health and psychology.
In my opinion, public health is an essential issue to consider to make that a country be able to progress. I would like to do research in order to contribute in new governmental policies creation and thus improve health quality offered by primary care centers to the community.
The psychology area is quite relevant in this profession. Nevertheless, apparently it is not completely developed by midwives. When I finish this career, I would like to work in a primary care center to have a deeper contact with the patients. I think is very important to know about patients’ needs, the way that they live and if they have any trouble that they want to share. Maybe this is the only instance to make a real difference in someone’s life.

Welcome to my blog!!!

Hi everyone, my name is María Carolina Aguilera, I'm a student of Obstetrics and I have to create this blog for my english class. Welcome to my blog!

Due to write and think in english is a very difficult process I think this is a good way to improve my writing skills.

In this blog I woud like to share a little bit of my thoughts about several topics. I hope you enjoy this page and we can learn together.

February, 27th of 2010: Earthquake in Chile

The day of the earthquake I was returning from Arica to Santiago with my family by plane. It was about 4:25 in the morning and the plain starts to descend getting ready to land. Suddenly the plain is climbing again. As a natural reaction everybody on board look at each other trying to stay calm, but at the same time we want to know what happen. A few minutes later the captain tells us that he can’t land in Santiago’s airport because a huge earthquake occurred in the city therefore he must to land in Mendoza. A panic environment could be felt inside the plain.
After 30 minutes we arrive to Mendoza. The captain gives us more information about the earthquake and the current situation in Chile. Everybody tried to communicate with their family but no one had signal to call, so passengers with cell phones looked for local radios to hear the news.
Although I didn´t experiment the earthquake this day was the longest, distressing and exhausting day of my life.