by Stephanie, Rebecca, & Krista
Today the nursing group went to a private hospital called Spire. While there, the general hospital manager (CEO) gave us a talk about how the private health care system in England is funded and run in relation to the public hospitals, like Salford Royal where we have been the past two days. One thing really interesting we learned about surgeons in England is they are offended if you refer to them as Doctor. You are supposed to refer to them as Mr. or Mrs. instead. Because doctors sign the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” and surgeons technically do harm during surgery, they therefore don’t like to be referred to as doctors. After the talk, we toured the hospital and noticed that this hospital was much nicer and more inviting than the hospital in Salford. We ate lunch in their cafeteria and left to head home, stopping at Julian’s home on the way. He let us take a look around his house and we got to meet his little Cavalier King Charles named Monty. Monty loved all the attention. Julian’s house was one of the bigger houses in the area and was detached from any other housing, unlike most houses in Manchester. We tried to get permission to use the hot tub in the backyard, but I don’t think he took us seriously.
Meanwhile, the sport group made their way over to the University for a research day. Phil, a staff member at Salford, gave us a short lesson on the technology available in their physiology lab. We experimented with the high speed cameras and reflection devices to recreate a 3D skeleton image of a dynamic movement. The program that we were using closely resembled the one they used to create Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Stephanie was selected to have the reflectors placed on specific spots on her body. For us, it was a challenge to see if the program could recreate a gymnastics skill that she performed within the camera space. After identifying each body part on the computer, the program reconstructed a 3D image of a skeleton doing gymnastics without a head. Several students also took turns jumping on the force plates. The goal was to determine if each leg had symmetrical input in the jump.
After our morning activities, we headed back to the dorms to pack up our duffle bag that we would leave in Manchester while traveling to London and Dublin. Our next stop was Trafford Centre, a huge ornate mall in the city of Manchester. Here we shopped around for a few hours and ate dinner. We noticed that stars and stripes were the “in” fashion. Several stores featured tables and racks of anything American. A quick ride brought us to the Salford City Reds stadium, home of the Reds rugby league. Although it had been raining and cold all day, it let up for just enough time to watch the game. The Olympic torch was making its way through Manchester, and we were able to take a group picture with one of the 300 torches around Great Britain! The rest of the night was free, the group stayed in and played cards to settle down for the next day’s activities.
Cheers! – Stephanie, Rebecca, & Krista
