June 4th, 2019:
The day is not even over yet and I can say that today was
probably my favorite day so far. We spent our day at the hospital observing
different floors, rotating in 2 hour increments. This hospital does things differently
than we are used to back home. The hospital here is ran by the Cherokee
community and even though it does have a CEO, the people of the community set
the ground rules. As far as the members of the health care team goes, it is the
same that we would see in our healthcare systems and I saw this first hand. My
first rotation was on the in-patient unit at the hospital. I got to observe the
way they give report, do rounds, and how they do bed side nursing. Report that
I witnessed was first done nurse to nurse and they all sat at a table and
listened to report on everybody however, they only wrote information and “took
report” on the patients they were going to be caring for. The next thing I got
to observe was rounding. During rounding a lot of people from the health care
team was there. The health care team members that were there included pharmacy,
behavioral health nurse, physicians, dietary, social services, nurses, CNA, and
nurse educator. During this rounding with everybody I was able to see things
that I had learned about in previous classes. Patient advocacy was being pushed
a lot during rounding and everything I learned in ethics class was seen and
being practiced (in the proper way) by these people.
The next location I went to was the emergency room and here
I got to see how things are handled when somebody comes in. The first thing
they do is stop and check in at the receptionist desk and then they are placed
into a triage room where a nurse checks them in. They explain what it was that
brought them in, they get a set of vitals taken, and then the nurse walks them
to their room. Once in their room the physician comes and sees them and then
the nurse will come in and do everything that the physician wants to be done.
After that they will decide if they will admit the patient, but they can only be
admitted if they are Native American. This is one thing that was different that
I observed in the organization that was different than ours. There was no wait
time (ours at home is typically hours), they saw the physician before the ER
nurse came in and seen them, and they walked their patient to X-Ray (at home
transport would have come and got them).
The last rotation I got to go to was primary care on the
pediatric side. Unfortunately, they had no appointments at the time that I was
there but I did get to read books on resources that they have for the Cherokee
community. When I was reading the books, I noticed that a home health resource
was Comfort Keepers. I found this neat and interesting because Comfort Keepers
started in Peoria, IL and it was actually my first health care job!
I was also able to learn a little bit about the culture and
medicine that is used with Native Americans. One thing is the teething ring
necklaces that they use for children who are teething. Bullnettle is the name
of it and they wear it and it helps the pain and salvia that is caused from
teething.
Tonight we will go to the outdoor theatre and then back at
it bright and early in the morning!