Today, the Anchorage group took a tour of the Alaska Native Medical Center. The ANMC campus is an extremely beautiful campus that has just added on and remodeled different wings of the hospital. What I found most interesting about ANMC is the unique lobby located at the main entrance of the hospital. Decorated with wood and artwork, this lobby means more to those who live here than an average hospital lobby. At ANMC, family members of patients at the hospital and community members come together within the lobby to partake in religious ceremonies, drumming circles, and more. Throughout this tour, we were also learning about the difficulties of managing rural health patients. ANMC is the largest hospital that "hub hospitals" or smaller hospitals feed into. So, there are patients who are from smaller villages in rural Alaska who have ended up coming to Anchorage due to their needs. However, Alaska has found a way to combat some of these problems regarding preventative services as well as deteriorating client conditions before they reach ANMC. We were able to observe a class for individuals who were appointed by their village to be the health aid. The health aid cares for all clients and is able to see clients and use high tech equipment such as AFHCAN (which takes vital signs, patient data, and can even listen to heart and lung sounds!). The health aid than will notify the physician and will follow a protocol on what steps they should take next to care for this person. We completed the tour and were encouraged to practice skills in a simulation lab to become more comfortable with the equipment used at ANMC. After this, the student nurses met their preceptors and were able to orientate to their new clinical environment. The student nurses are scattered throughout ANMC, with some of us working in the OR, labor and delivery, and outpatient chemo therapy. The whole orientation really helped us learn how ANMC is so different than previous rotations, we learned a lot about the population and the cultural components that are encouraged and celebrated at ANMC.
ANMC campus
ANMC Tour
During our hospital orientation, we ran into a CSS alumni from 1981! Renee started at ANMC as a CNO about 2 years ago. She invited our group over to her house to eat some phenomenal Greek food. She encouraged us to build our story and take the opportunities as we see them. It also goes to show you what a small world it really is!