June 6th, 2019:
Today we went into Asheville, NC and toured Mission Children’s
Hospital. It was a great experience to see and to compare to our hospitals back
home and the Cherokee hospital we got to see previously this week. Since I work
in the Children’s Hospital of Illinois I thought that Mission was very similar to
our hospital. However, it was very different from Methodist and Cherokee
Hospital. The NICU was very different than our NICU because our NICU is
individual rooms but the NICU there was just curtain divided. Our rooms are
also bigger but mostly everything was similar. Hospitalization is something
that effects both patients and families. It is the most stressful time on the
parents and the children are usually terrified. Not much, if any, sleep is
gotten by either the parent or the child while in the hospital. Family-centered
care is a huge thing that is practiced within Asheville, NC. They include the families
in discussions, decisions, and they bring them to a separate table to discuss
the plan of care. One resource that the hospital had that I really appreciated
was the house that the family could stay in if they lived outside the county.
Comparing Asheville, NC to Cherokee, NC there was a lot of
things that stood out to me. At the clinic, almost everything was under one
roof so patients could make their appointments for each individual thing on the
same day. This is the same as Cherokee because they have everything in their
hospital so patients can be seen for things all at once. That is the thing that
stuck out to me the most today because I think that is the most incredible
thing.
After the hospital and clinic tour we went to downtown
Asheville and just did some exploring and shopping. They had really cool little
shops and diners all throughout downtown. My favorite part of downtown was definitely
that every store was pet friendly and left water bowls out for the dogs.
Tomorrow we will
donate all the clothes and diapers that were donated to the Cherokee Hospital
and I can’t wait to see the look on their faces!