Busy, Busy, Busy

These past week was very busy and exciting! Briana and I began Pulic Health on the reservation. The staff is wonderful. They have such strong teamwork and has given me a view at how an organization should run from the director all the way to the nurses and patient care assistances (called CHRs).

Public Health is different out on the reservation. It is a lot more home visits and the nurses traveling to the patients than the patients coming to see the nurses at a clinic or their offices. There is one nurse and two LPNs per district plus a CHR, who is a community member from Gila River Reservation. The reason there are CHRs is many times patient relate better with a caregiver who comes from the same background and is a community memeber themselves.

I did about 4 home visits each day. Most community members are open to letting a vistor come into their home. Some of the duties of the public health nurses include filling weekly pill boxes with the patient's perscribed medicine, checking vitals, and calling the clinics or hospital if the patient should need transportation to an appointment. They also run to the pharmacy for patients if their medicine is all out.

Public health has taught me a lot about the community in just one week. While in the patient's house I learned by observing how the family interacts with each other, the quality of their living situations, and the resources avaliable to them.

Many times if the public health nurses do not make it to a patients' home to fill their pill boxes, the patient will simply not take their medicine. The community these individuals live in many of their healthcare is done for them or it is expected by the community members for the nurses and doctors to do. Unlike our healthcare system at home were it is promoted to take part in your healthcare and course of treatment.

For fun this week and for Cemile's birthday we went to a Phoenix Suns Basketball Game. It was awesome, because we bought tickets in the balcony section way up at the top and when we arrived their were signs on our seats saying, "YOUR A WINNER". We won tickets 19 rows from the floor of the court. It was a lot of fun. We also got to see downtown a bit and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe.