June 3rd

Where do I start?! Lets start with expressing how much I genuinely enjoyed learning about the community I will be spending the next week in.  Learning about the Cherokee community has allowed me to gain so much knowledge and also get rid of some stereotypical thoughts about this area.  Cherokee is nothing like I imagined it would be.  I had an image in my head that the community would be as it is depicted in an Indian film.  The community is very modernized compared to my original thoughts and I knew that there was going to be a lot of room for growing my knowledge base this week.  It was very interesting to learn about the seven different clans within the Cherokee community.  I was also under the impression that the clans respected each other but didn't intermix.  Learning about how they marry between clans was really interesting to me.  I also believed that the men were respected in the culture and made most of the decisions, but I was wrong.  I found it so interesting that men join their wives clan and that the children are considered to be her children and are now within that clan.  In our culture, I feel as if men are looked at above women and I just assumed it was like that within theirs as well.  Learning how highly women were seen within their culture was actually such a neat thing to learn about.

When visiting the Swain Community Hospital, I was honestly shocked at how little their hospital was and how many resources they lacked.  The hospital right now has 48 and only 25 are currently being used.  It was shocking when they stated that only 2-4% of the patients seen in the ED get admitted to their hospital (diverting the rest to Harris, their sister hospital, and to Ashville, if necessary.)  The hospital currently holds mostly swing bed patients (sort of like a transitional care floor) and some med-surg patients.  Currently, they have 4 rooms in their ED and usually those hold psych patients until they can find placement.  It was really interesting to learn about the major health disparities within North Carolina as a whole state regarding the lack of mental health facilities (as there are only 3 in the state.)  They are working on a plan for a Mental Health unit, which I feel will be very beneficial to the community they are serving.  They do not currently have any sub-specialties so anything that fits under a specific type of care unfortunately has to be diverted to bigger facilities that are better equip to provide that type of care.  The hospital is staffed with 5 nurses, 1-2 CNAs, and 1 physician for all of the impatient patients.  Although they do not have a shortage of employees, if one were to call in, it would cause a whole shift in the patient care teams.