A dentist with a view

The dentist was booked for two o'clock. I turned up an hour early, because there is a restaurant on the ground floor of the building and because I wanted to see how this works here.

Lunch first

Ceviche with avocado and lime, and a lemonade. The tables are outside under trees, between the gate and the car park, and people in white coats walked past with folders under their arms. A restaurant under a medical building is a perfectly normal combination here: lunch on the ground floor, treatment twenty floors up.

The medical building

The building is called Intermédica, Centro de Especialistas, it stands at Calle 7 number 39-197 in El Poblado, and it is an entire tower of consulting rooms. Dentists, ophthalmologists, dermatology, orthopaedics, laboratories, a pharmacy. A reception desk downstairs, lifts, signs on every floor.

The model is common in Colombia and almost unknown at home: private practices group into one building, share the reception and the back of house, and the patient moves between floors instead of across the city.

A chair by a glass wall

What took my breath away was the consulting room.

The dentist's chair stood a metre from a full height glass wall, and behind it lay the whole Medellín valley: roofs, towers, mountains on the horizon and clouds above them. Lie back and you are looking at mountains.

New equipment, clean, calm, no queue. The dentist spoke slowly and clearly, and you could tell she is used to people whose Spanish is only starting.

What was done and what it cost I will keep to myself. What can be written in general is in the guide about dentists and cosmetic work in the Practical section.

A safety officer's note

Two things caught my eye in a building full of consulting rooms. The escape route signage was everywhere, legible and unobstructed. And nobody crowded into the lifts, because there are enough of them.

It sounds like a detail. In a healthcare building, a clear corridor and working signage are exactly what you notice only when it is too late.