Day 6: Mission Hospital

Overall, today was a fantastic day. We got a full tour of Mission Hospital, which is a very large hospital located in Asheville, NC (approx. 1.5 hours from Cherokee), shopped around a little bit in downtown Asheville, including for the soup kitchen we are visiting tomorrow, then hiked up Clingman's Dome in Bryson City.

The tour of Mission Hospital was fantastic. They have about 700 beds, which is even a little larger than the hospitals we have in the area I'm from; but there is also a huge difference in the area of coverage for just one facility, because Mission covers several different counties in the Northwestern portion of North Carolina, whereas there's more than 4 hospitals located in just the one urban city I live in, and several others located in other cities nearby. Comparing to Swain Hospital (the other facility our group toured the other day) the biggest difference is of course the amount of resources and staffing at Mission Hospital. Swain County hospital only keeps a few of their patients because they have little to no resources, then sends them off to Mission Hospital via helicopter. The reason they life-flight the patients to Mission is because it is much faster compared to the 1.5 hour drive there that most people have to do, or even farther depending on which hospital is closest in certain situations. Therefore, Mission Hospital is the go-to, so they don't send off anyone to other hospitals, especially since they have all of the resources you could think of that are basic to large, Level I trauma centers. They also use certain workflows that they have created themselves and found to be effective, or sometimes adopted a technique from another company that was useful in providing care. One of the ways they said to improve efficiency in care that really stood out to me is whenever they have a trauma occur in the ED, all personnel has to wear a large sticker that indicates what role they have in the trauma, then they have certain positioning that they have to be standing in. They have found this to better the workflow and communication of a trauma. I'm not sure if our trauma centers have a technique like this back home, but I do believe that companies should take a look at hospitals like Mission if they are wondering if there is anything they can intervene with to improve a process.

Pictured: My instructor and I with our carts full of the groceries we're donating tomorrow and a picture of us on top of Clingman's Dome (Me, Brenda, Amy, Hannah, Kendi, Brittany).