Day 5 of Travel

One important thing I have learned about childrearing practice in this community is how important family is. They are raised with the belief that family is the most important thing. When someone has a child and for some reason, they are unable to care for their child, the child will go to another family member. It is not uncommon to see a grandparent caring for a young child. They also make sure that the children stay within the Cherokee tribe. If a child needs to be fostered there are people within in the community that they can call who will come to care for the children until they can find a more permanent solution. When we went to the church tonight almost every family that was there had foster children. I also noticed that there were several children there that were with their grandparents. I was able to learn that there are times the parents do get to continue to interact with their children with the hope that one day the child will be able to reunited with their parent. This also allows the children to be apart of their family if they do have to be fostered by someone outside of their family. I feel like the big support systems in the community are the families and church. Like I have stated before this is a family orientated community that work together to make sure that the needs of the community are being met. I have also learned that the church can be a big support on the community. They help to create resources for families and they have helped to coordinate the donations that we have given them and made sure that they make it to who has the most need for it. I feel that most children and family who are resilient can survive in any situation. They have been through things like growing up with addiction and trauma that I cannot begin to understand. From personal experience I know that growing up with a parent who is addicted can make you have to grow up quickly and can make you more of a parent figure to your own parent than having the opportunity to be a child or teenager. I feel that this can make you a stronger person and it can be easier to deal with a stressful situation because it is something that you have been going through your whole life.

Day 4 of Travel

The healthcare system here is set up to cater to the people. It was designed to make sure that the people of the community are getting the care that they want the way that they want it. The healthcare system is funded by the casino and also work with the tribal council to work with the hospital. They do have a few state regulations that they have to follow like having their ER open to the public and not only Cherokee. They have many different members on their healthcare team. In the primary care setting they have what they call pods. The have a nurse, CMA/LPN, physician, nurse practitioner, behavioral health, and CMS. They also have direct access to a pharmacy and when the pharmacy is closed, they can receive some of their medications from the ER. One of the biggest difference I noticed was while I was on the floor in, in-patient. The whole time we were there not one call light went off. When something beeped someone immediately went into the room to find out what the beeping was and stop it. I will say a similarity I saw was how people care. We may not have the healthcare system that they have, but I know there are many people who would love to see healthcare run in this way. I got to see how when someone comes in with a need is handled when I was observing in primary care. There was a person that came in to see a provider, but they knew that she also needed to see nutrition and a behavioral health specialist. She did not have an appointment to see either of these specialties but since she was early they had the person who did nutrition come in and speak with her while they were waiting for the provider and asked her if after she would like to speak with the behavioral health specialist because she had a history of mental health. One big alternative medicine that I have learned about bull nettle root. They use this for children who are teething. It helps to dry up secretions and help sooth teething pain. This is something that they place on the child’s neck once they start teething and it usually does not come off until they are toddlers.

Day 3 of Travel

I will say that when we came here, I was expecting to see more signs of poverty. I expected it to look a little more run down than it was. I have found out that this is not the case. I have also learned that a lot of the people here are more willing to speak with us because they want to be able to teach us the true ways of their culture and not the stereotype. I also did not realize how touristy this area was going to be. When learning about their history today I found it very interesting how they created their items of daily use. I thought it was interesting that they were able to use various parts of animals to help them make things like string and glue. It blows my mind that they were able to figure out the different ingredients it would take to create this and how creative and patient of a culture this is. I learned today how family oriented they are. When a member of the family is in the hospital or having a procedure, the whole family shows up for support. Kayla brought up a point that her mom was going in for a procedure and she did not think anything of going in with her mom, and I would have felt the same way. This is not something that I would have been worried about either, but in this culture it is normal to make sure that you are there with your family during something that may not seem like a big deal because they believe that you never when the end is the end. They have a school that the parents can send their children to where they learn everything about their culture. The parents even sign a contract stating that they will only speak that language at home, and they also go through training so that they can help their children to be successful. We also learned today, through Dorian from the museum, that at their high school they do some things that help them learn more about her culture. She spoke about a mentor program that they do to help to teach the children about their own culture. While writing this I can only think of the many differences that we have and how I hope that we can someday adopt these values. The way they have set up their hospital is in the most holistic way by making sure that the patient and their needs always come first. They want to make sure that the patients keep coming back and get the best care that they can receive, by also making it the most convenient. They made sure that they can get almost all of their services done in one place because they realize that if they do not they will have to drive many different places and some of these places are far and most do not have the means to travel that far. I will say that throughout school I can see how it is turning, because we learn all about how it is important to look at more than just the illness that presents in the person, but looking at them as a whole person and realizing if they are not healthy in other aspects of life they will cannot be fully healthy.