Day 6- Tuesday, March 14th
Our first day in Homer was probably one of the earliest mornings we had on the trip because it was our first day of clinical! Our house was about 20 minutes or so out of town so we drove in to drop Sami off first. While driving in, we got see the sunrise over the mountains so it wasn’t a bad way to start the day. (I could talk about those mountains all day if I had the chance). After we dropped Sami off at the public health office Kaylee, Andrea, and I went for coffee across the street to Two Sisters Bakery (one of the cutest bakery’s I’ve seen). After our coffee break I was dropped off at my capstone site- Seldovia Village Tribe Clinic. The SVT clinic has three locations; one in Homer, another in Anchor Point (20 minutes north of Homer), and the last in Seldovia (a town across the bay only accessible by ferry or plane).
When I arrived to the clinic they said I’d be in Anchor point all day so a nurse drove me there and on the way we talked about the way of life in Homer and what types of resources they have. There are four volcanoes in Homer (Redoubt, Augustine, Douglas, and Iliamna) and one of them caused a lot of damage a few years ago. I hadn’t known Alaska to have volcanoes so that was something new I learned and with their limited resources it took a few weeks to recover from the damage caused by the ash left by the eruption. There are also a lot of villages/communities in or near Homer that are against vaccination so there are large numbers of people with Hepatitis, Pertussis, and easily treatable diseases in this particular area. Homer also doesn’t have a lot of people living with running water. There is a place to shower in a laundry mat or in the community center that also has a pool.
The Anchor Point clinic is open only 2 days a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Anchor Point SVT clinic also has what’s called “compassionate care.” This is a sliding scale of fees and patients can receive up to a 60% discount on their health care if they are uninsured. The clinic looks at their monthly income and places the patients into one of three categories for discount rates. This allows patients to receive care and pay just a small copay for all of their services.
When I got to the Anchor Point SVT clinic I was busy right away rooming patients, taking vitals, drawing blood, and giving various medication injections. The clinic only had a Nurse Practitioner, a medical assistant, and a receptionist. There are a lot of medical assistants, which requires two years of training, because there’s such a shortage of nurses so they do a lot of skills nurses typically do. The MA’s complete more procedures and the RN’s do more case management work (closely related to social work). I saw a wide variety of patients and some patients had very heartbreaking backgrounds. People primarily live a “substance lifestyle” which means they prefer to live off the land. Because of that and the fact that Alaska has such a high cost of living, a lot of the patients I saw didn’t have much and didn’t have many resources they could afford.
Towards the end of the day, a man walked into the clinic and talked to the NP whom he knew as a close friend. She told him I was a student nurse and he said he wanted to give myself and the other clinic staff gifts. He went to his car and brought back a few things. The first thing he gave us was a real Iditarod race sign that he took down from the trail earlier that day (today the winner of the race was announced and he was a volunteer from the race). He also gave us posters that were given to all of the racers the night before the race at their banquet. He then shared that he had won the Iditarod race in the past and even had an official license plate that is given to all of the winners. It was so exciting to listen to his story and I was very grateful for his gifts!
After we were all picked up from our clinical sites we went to a place on The Spit (similar to the canal in Duluth) and went to a place called the Salty Dawg Saloon. Everyone said that if you’re in Homer you need to visit this place and put a dollar bill on the wall. When you go there for the first time you have to write something on a dollar bill and pin it to the wall because it’s a tradition. After that we drove to the end of The Spit and took our picture next to the Land’s End sign. We were as far west as we could possibly get by car in this area of Alaska! Once we were done exploring The Spit we drove back to the house, ate dinner, and got ready for our next clinical day.
Our first day in Homer was probably one of the earliest mornings we had on the trip because it was our first day of clinical! Our house was about 20 minutes or so out of town so we drove in to drop Sami off first. While driving in, we got see the sunrise over the mountains so it wasn’t a bad way to start the day. (I could talk about those mountains all day if I had the chance). After we dropped Sami off at the public health office Kaylee, Andrea, and I went for coffee across the street to Two Sisters Bakery (one of the cutest bakery’s I’ve seen). After our coffee break I was dropped off at my capstone site- Seldovia Village Tribe Clinic. The SVT clinic has three locations; one in Homer, another in Anchor Point (20 minutes north of Homer), and the last in Seldovia (a town across the bay only accessible by ferry or plane).
When I arrived to the clinic they said I’d be in Anchor point all day so a nurse drove me there and on the way we talked about the way of life in Homer and what types of resources they have. There are four volcanoes in Homer (Redoubt, Augustine, Douglas, and Iliamna) and one of them caused a lot of damage a few years ago. I hadn’t known Alaska to have volcanoes so that was something new I learned and with their limited resources it took a few weeks to recover from the damage caused by the ash left by the eruption. There are also a lot of villages/communities in or near Homer that are against vaccination so there are large numbers of people with Hepatitis, Pertussis, and easily treatable diseases in this particular area. Homer also doesn’t have a lot of people living with running water. There is a place to shower in a laundry mat or in the community center that also has a pool.
The Anchor Point clinic is open only 2 days a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Anchor Point SVT clinic also has what’s called “compassionate care.” This is a sliding scale of fees and patients can receive up to a 60% discount on their health care if they are uninsured. The clinic looks at their monthly income and places the patients into one of three categories for discount rates. This allows patients to receive care and pay just a small copay for all of their services.
When I got to the Anchor Point SVT clinic I was busy right away rooming patients, taking vitals, drawing blood, and giving various medication injections. The clinic only had a Nurse Practitioner, a medical assistant, and a receptionist. There are a lot of medical assistants, which requires two years of training, because there’s such a shortage of nurses so they do a lot of skills nurses typically do. The MA’s complete more procedures and the RN’s do more case management work (closely related to social work). I saw a wide variety of patients and some patients had very heartbreaking backgrounds. People primarily live a “substance lifestyle” which means they prefer to live off the land. Because of that and the fact that Alaska has such a high cost of living, a lot of the patients I saw didn’t have much and didn’t have many resources they could afford.
Towards the end of the day, a man walked into the clinic and talked to the NP whom he knew as a close friend. She told him I was a student nurse and he said he wanted to give myself and the other clinic staff gifts. He went to his car and brought back a few things. The first thing he gave us was a real Iditarod race sign that he took down from the trail earlier that day (today the winner of the race was announced and he was a volunteer from the race). He also gave us posters that were given to all of the racers the night before the race at their banquet. He then shared that he had won the Iditarod race in the past and even had an official license plate that is given to all of the winners. It was so exciting to listen to his story and I was very grateful for his gifts!
After we were all picked up from our clinical sites we went to a place on The Spit (similar to the canal in Duluth) and went to a place called the Salty Dawg Saloon. Everyone said that if you’re in Homer you need to visit this place and put a dollar bill on the wall. When you go there for the first time you have to write something on a dollar bill and pin it to the wall because it’s a tradition. After that we drove to the end of The Spit and took our picture next to the Land’s End sign. We were as far west as we could possibly get by car in this area of Alaska! Once we were done exploring The Spit we drove back to the house, ate dinner, and got ready for our next clinical day.