Expectations - July 9, 2017

I’m very excited for this travel course to begin and to dive straight in, head first, to learning about health care from a different part of our amazing country. What I’m most excited about in the upcoming week is learning how the healthcare at the Cherokee Indian Hospital differs from the westernized medicine we give to patients in central Illinois. I’m expecting it to be on a whole different spectrum than what we, as nursing students, are used to learning. I’m keeping an open mind and am going to take in as much knowledge as possible from my clinical experiences this week to hopefully bring back new skills to help the future patients and families I care for. My biggest apprehension is I don’t know if I will be able to understand all the ends and outs of the actual reservation lifestyle. I know this tribe especially, like the rest of the world, experiences a drug and alcohol addiction problem and it overtakes many of their children. The influences that the healthcare system can have on a family and a child can immensely change a life. This tribe has expressed that they are excited to start the process of building an addiction recovery center for their people, which is a huge step in the right direction of being a self-sufficient society while caring for their own children in a way that is for the greater good of the community. The ‘stereotype’ I have in my head is the picture in my elementary school textbooks of Native Americans that live in teepees and only cook by fire, but I know that most enrolled members of the Cherokee tribe live a civilized life just like the rest of the world. I hope to erase the mental picture that’s in my head now and replace it with the truth after this week is over!