Day 3: Hospital & Museum

The main points on our itinerary today was that we visited the Swain County Hospital and went to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. My very first impression of the Cherokee environment is that it is honestly a little more up-scale than I expected. Even though there are plenty of rougher areas, there were a lot of nice neighborhoods and houses that we saw on our way to the cabin and hospital. The people downtown are incredibly friendly and I know this sounds kind of odd, but I also noticed that people seem to drive a little more safer here than people in Illinois.

What I found most interesting as I learned about the Cherokee history walking through the museum is honestly their health beliefs. There was this nice little presentation about how they never had disease or any alteration to their bodies until the people began to ran out of food, so they had to start killing animals. Once they started killing animals, the animals joined up and decided that for every animal that the people kill, they will set out a disease. Once people started falling ill, the plants noticed, joined up, and decided that for every illness, the plants will set out a cure for that illness in order to bring peace and harmony to the world. I found this story incredibly fascinating, and sent me down this whole thought process of different illnesses that we are still trying to find the associated plant for - such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. So, I suppose that's a thought I can continue on if I somehow end up doing any research.

Speaking of health, I want to talk a little about our visit to Swain County hospital. This hospital has 48 beds, and they only use 25 of them. Compared to the hospitals we're used to, where we have ~400 beds, that is considered very small. What I did find great is how they recognize the various issues they have in the rural communities and the great strides they take to improve the community's health. For example, several years ago, Duke Lifepoint began to own Swain County Hospital to give them the capitol they needed to continue helping their community. Several of the executives also talked about how big of a problem transportation becomes in the area, because then there really is no way for their patients to get to the pharmacy or to their primary care provider.

Another part of Swain County Hospital that I found amazing was the amount of services they have for such a rural community. They have a lot of primary care attached to the hospital itself, and on the floor they have physical therapy and occupational therapy. Also, since they have joined with Duke Lifepoint, when a patient is discharged, their sister hospital in Harris has a discharge team that takes care of all of the discharge planning and sets up Home Health for the patients. So funny enough, just like everything else in a smaller community, so much more can happen when everyone comes together. There are of course always shortages in nurses, assistants, first responders, and providers, but these people know how to make it work with what they have. One service that they mentioned is incredibly difficult at the moment is mental health, and that it is actually a growing issue in all of North Carolina. This could be due to a multitude of things out here in rural areas, like the lack of social interaction, addiction, or family history. On the bright side, it seems that a lot of healthcare works acknowledge that this is an issue, and are on track with finding a way to be able to get help to those that need it.