First day in Peds

So today was my first official day at CMC, Christian Medical College in Vellore. I signed up for pediatrics since I plan on doing this as my future occupation and I wanted to see how different or similar it would be to the way I have been used to practicing/observing in the U.S. To start off, each doctor will see around 60-70 patients a day! There did not seem to be much security around the hospital. The peds wards were locked but the clinic was a "mad house." Those are the exact words my attending used the entire day while I followed him. The etiquette is also quite different. To my surprise, I did see quite a few patients come in with their fathers instead of their mothers. If the dad was not present then the grandmother and mom would be present. The children were cute, as always! Today I saw parvovirus/rubella, status elipticus, gastroenteritis, failure to thrive babies, hypertonic babies, dystonia, and many viral syndromes.
Patients would just wander into the doctors offices and there did not seem to be much organization going on. The physicians would use the PA system to call patients into their rooms and each rooms held two doctors seeing patients at the same time. One bed was used between the two doctors and the sheet on the bed remained the same the entire day. Hands were seldomly washed between patients and equipments were also shared freely between the children....