June 6th

As I walked around Mission Hospital today, I realized how vastly different it was from Swain Hospital.  Mission Hospital is very similar to our urban hospitals within Peoria, IL.  The hospital in Asheville is a level 2 trauma center and takes specialty patients from 24 different counties.  This is the main hospital and some communities have to drive an hour or more to reach it.  Swain Hospital is only able to take patients that are stable but need more assistance.  The level of acuity is very different between how sick the patients can be at each hospital.  The thing that stood out to me the most is the sense of community within the hospital.  Although they could hold 750 patients within the hospital, most of the staff and management staff especially knew the employees of each floor.  This hospital uses teamwork and makes sure that patients are taken care of as best and quickly as possible.  After visiting this hospital, I was very intrigued with employment here as it seems to have some of the best resources and gets to care for several different communities.