June 3rd, 2019

Today was a very busy day, yet very exciting. We were able to visit Swain Co. Hospital, the Cherokee museum, and go tubing. The reservation is very different than I imagined it to be. It honestly is not as run down as I had pictured, they have a lot of nice areas, yes there still is severe poverty in places, but not everywhere. What I found the most interesting about the culture is that the women pretty much wear the belts, meaning they control a lot. When they get married; the man will join the women's tribe and be with her, everything that the man owns the women takes ownership of, also if she decides not to be with him, she can just take his stuff that she wants to give him and sit it on the porch. So, I clearly am living in the wrong area. In regards to Swain Co. Hospital, they have a lot to offer, however it is limited to the severity of the patient. They have a pain clinic for chronic pain, they have 25 beds in the hospital, they have 6 beds in the ED. To give you an idea, they usually only admit 1-2% of patients to their hospital. They have a partner hospital, 20 miles away, that they send a lot of their patients they cannot care for to. If their partner cannot care for them, they go to mission hospital, which is huge. There is a work shortage in this hospital as well. Not a lot of people want to or have the skill set to work at a hospital like that. They had said they pay full tuition and supplies to offer nurses positions there for just two years. That is an amazing program! The biggest type of health care that they have difficulty accessing is all your specialty areas, they do not have the access or resources to offer that kind of care, so they have to transfer those patients. Overall, I think they do an amazing job handling what they do, with the little they have.










Comments

  1. Amy SmithJune 10, 2019 at 2:28 PM

    Great pictures! You made me laugh when you said you are living in the wrong area. Maybe you can get adopted into a Cherokee tribe?

    ReplyDelete

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