Anyway, today was super successful. The morning started off with my first prenatal care visit observation and interview. The woman is Mexican-American and preferred to do the interview in English, for which I was honestly quite grateful today. She was super nice and friendly, and very excited to talk about her pregnancy and impending delivery with me. The obstetrician was also great- she already set up another patient for me on Thursday morning!
After that, Beatriz, who works at the university in Ciudad Juárez I'm collaborating with, picked Jill and I up at our office and we headed to Mexico. One of her back windows was smashed last week, which kind of prevented me from getting to know Beatriz since I couldn't hear what was going on in the front of the car. We sat in so much traffic to cross the bridge (and horns were constantly honking), and then just as the traffic started breaking up the truck in front of us broke down, so naturally the person driving beside him stopped to give him a jump. It was pretty comical, to say the very least. But honestly, after all the hype of this being my first time in Mexico and all the murders in Juárez, it was a very anti-climatic trip. Here's the photo evidence that I crossed the bridge:
We had meetings at two of the hospitals in Juárez to discuss the study. The first hospital looked really old and run down, so I was quite surprised to learn it's only been open for about 10 years. One of the men I was meeting with told me that the building was confiscated from a drug lord who had built it as a personal hotel about 20 years ago. All of his other properties were torn down, but this one was given to the community with the mandate that it be used to improve health. I thought that was a pretty cool story. Anyway, there we met with a 4th year medical resident and a couple of obstetricians who are also on faculty with the medical school. It was clearly a very political meeting- I think the doctors are more interested in participating because the study is through so many reputable institutions than because they care about qualitative research. They did seem interested in the topic of c-sections though, so that's definitely a good thing. Evidently a group of residents will be supporting me by picking me up on the Mexican side of the bridge every time I cross. They'll also be observing prenatal care visits with me and observing the interviews I do. I think the latter is kind of awkward, but they want to learn about qualitative methods so that they can continue my study on the Mexican side of the border after I leave for their own theses. I'm not quite sure if they chose to participate or were told that they had to, but vamos a ver how it all works out. At least the residents are likely to use their email to communicate with me regarding when patients enroll in the study, and that will probably be more convenient than trying to figure out international phone stuff.
The meeting at the second hospital was a little bit more tense. I'm not sure what the level of communication about the study has been, but one of the men felt like he didn't know why he was there. However, it ended up going well. Overall, both hospitals are willing to participate and are confident that they'll each have at least 8 patients for me. Woo!
Coming back to Texas, Jill and I walked across the bridge and then Beatriz picked us up on the other side and drove us back to the office. Beatriz crosses every day for work and has some sort of special pass that only covers her getting back into the US, so Jill and I had to walk through customs. The US citizen line was about 1/10th the length of the line for non-US citizens- I felt so guilty walking by everyone. But it definitely saved us a lot of time. I found it kind of amusing that we each had to pay a quarter to walk through a turnstile to leave Mexico before getting to the US customs agents.
When I got back to the office this afternoon, I found out that one of the doctors we were hoping to include on the US side isn't interested. Bummer. But then I got a call from a woman whose doctor referred her to the study, so I'll likely be interviewing her next week. Yay!
So overall I would call today a successful one. Now it's time to start transcribing!
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