Sharon and I have completed week 2 at Rosebud thus far. I
think the initial impressions and settling in have been completed at this
juncture, and some reflection is in order – especially from the vantage point of
social medicine; but I’ll describe a bit about the clinical medicine experience
we have been having as well. In regards to clinical work, it’s been great to
see how medicine knowledge can be somewhat transferred to whatever setting
you’re in (a basic example: 8 day old well child check—my brain remembers most
of the things we should check for baby and mom, despite having no
automated crutches present, wow I must have learned something in residency for the past 3 years!) – and
we’ve been having the gamut of experiences from inpatient to outpatient, and
the dual training that both Sharon and I have through Med-Peds has been pretty
awesome and flexible in this remote/rural setting.
In regards to our clinical work, we spend the morning
rounding on the inpatients, and it is like any typical day on the medicine wards back at home in Minnesota – pre-round, have
multidisciplinary rounds, see the patients, orders, and then notes. The medical record system is a familiar VA
style EMR (just imagine it as CPRS with fewer features) and I
will begrudgingly admit that having training at the VA for residency has
actually been helpful for adjusting to the medical record system here. The
census has varied while we have been here and we have not had any inpatient
pediatrics thus far (which is a good thing for the patients but not necessarily
for clinical learning etc, but you get the point…). Regardless, a lot of the
admissions of adults frequently have something to do with alcohol,
unfortunately. Other things to note though, importantly, is that the hospital’s
ability to care for high acuity patients is minimal; there is no subspecialty
care, really (we do have a podiatrist on site, who has been very helpful!), and
no surgical services. An important part
of learning that seems to play a part here is triaging appropriately. If
patients present with problems that we cannot adequately treat or potentially
adequately treat, they have to be transferred out to a hospital in Rapid City
or Sioux Falls (closest towns that are about 2-3 hour drives away and sometimes a medical flight evacuation is necessitated).
Going back to the day timeline: We take a lunch break to eat
at home (5 minute walk, which is quite convenient)—and in reference to
the literal food desert that Sharon mentioned we are in, we’ve been making all
3 of our meals for the past 2 weeks, and have been forced to cook things we want
to eat; Sharon mostly takes the lead as head chef and I help chop and clean
things and occasionally make things as well (lumpy pancakes?). After the lunch break, one of us goes to
outpatient pediatric clinic and the other to medicine clinic.
A bulk of the medicine here seems to be primary care, and
anyone interested in primary care I think would really enjoy practicing here – and
not enjoyment in the sense that you’re in a system that has everything set up
for you (it clearly is not), but I think I can imagine the providers finding a
lot of meaning in the care that they provide for the clinic patients they see. Sharon’s
clinic back at home is at CUHCC (a FQHC), and states that the clinic here actually
may have a bit more resources than CUHCC, thus her experiences there have
prepared for the dysfunction that can occur in the clinical setting (unlike my
experience at a smooth, functional, well-funded clinic in the suburbs of
Minnesota).
Either way, when we aren’t engaged with the clinical work, we’ve
had opportunities to learn more about the Native American community (albeit limited
in direct community interactions due to COVID). There have been good podcasts,
lectures, book readings, academic articles, to try and learn more about the
community we have been working with. In the back of my mind with any sort of
rotation where we are outsiders, I try to believe that we aren’t committing
medical voyeurism or tourism and I think we try our best not to be in that
light. I always try to be cognizant of the fact that hopefully we aren’t
committing those less than helpful acts, but intention doesn’t always matter if
the reception of it is different. But anyway.
In general, I think the main serious reflection that I can
offer hidden deep in this post is
perhaps sadness about my own naiveite regarding Native American health. I think generally
speaking for myself or my cohort of resident friends (fairly well educated, interested
in health equity), we have all been well aware that IHS is underfunded, that
the Native Americans were mistreated (broadly speaking) by colonizers/Americans/us when they
first arrived in the U.S. many years ago, we’ve all heard about food deserts, underserved
care, etc etc.
All of this is not news or new information to a lot of us (I presume).
I think I knew this in my mind, perhaps theoretically. Maybe it is sad that it
required me to physically be placed on a reservation, interacting with patients
and community members to realize the severe inequity of care that these
patients receive – almost similar to being in a foreign country, sadly, when
they are actually in the United States – and the complete lack of interest (or maybe awareness, or discussion?) that
most of the medical community, at least to my experience, possesses about the
Native American community. Perhaps it is also the fact that I haven’t had much
opportunity to work with the “rural” underserved; having lived in cities for most
of my life, underserved communities in the inner cities are not new in my mind,
but this rural poverty is definitely slightly different…(I’ll have to think
more about how to unpack that …but I think the remoteness of everyone in the rural
community doesn’t seem to help the situation.)
Now I know that this can be said of many
topics (as in, you might be passionate about something that others are not!)
but after having been here for 2 weeks, I truly feel that as a residency
program and medical community, we don’t really talk about Native American
health as much as we probably should. Again, maybe it requires one to suffer
through actually being a food desert for 4 weeks, ie experience a personal inconvenience, to have empathy towards
having poor access to nutritional food (food that you or I would want to eat on
a daily basis -- and I personally would blame capitalism for this one -- making processed
low quality food the cheapest thing and most accessible thing to be available
for these patients). But I want to
believe that to possess empathy, it doesn’t require you to actually experience
something, I mean, that’s the definition of it, after all…(anyway, I’m trying
to find reasons for my feelings and thoughts above).
The revisionist history
that Americans are taught, about Native Americans, and the lack of detail
perhaps about the atrocities/massacres that has happened in the past, and the
rippling effects that this has had on native American communities << I
personally learned more of this through this documentary which, I would
recommend (resources provided by AmeriCorps
Members here in the community, Caroline & Margaret!)>> is pretty bad.
History is obviously recorded in a certain way (usually by way of the
dominant (?)/colonizers / oppressors) in the world, but one thing that stuck
out for me that was mentioned by the documentary was that, if we think of most
Americans, we teach and learn a certain type of history about America through our U.S.
public education system. If this "truth" is what the majority of Americans understand and have lived with, it sadly is not surprising that the Native American community is forgotten by
us-- as the majority of functioning and active members of society mostly know only the public school's rendition of the telling of America's history.
There are a lot of further thoughts that I could expound upon
regarding the above, but I think I’ll end it here. One of the doctors that come
from the Mass Gen team mentioned this to me at clinic one day and she stated
she hopes to “elevate the quality of care” that these patients receive. And
they certainly do deserve this, as much as any one of us.
Photo of me vaccinating Sharon for COVID19! (2nd
dose, and her immune system in action below, making her very sleepy after her vaccine)
Solar panels that are right next to the hospital that are pretty cool!
If you look carefully, there are about 3 pheasants in the photo. A lot of them run around in the morning on campus. #postcardpheasant
Next update to be provided by Sharon.....!
-Hannah