Day 3

The health care system in this community is ran by the people and for the people. The health care system caters to the needs of the people of the community. Understanding the historic generation trauma was important in how the way the hospital was ran. Setting everything up so that all needs are met in the easiest way possible, and your contact is personal, it doesn’t keep changing. The way the hospital was set up to run in a way that meets a vast amount of needs of the people, and it definitely does that. it’s true to its mission and vision statement. The tribal council runs the hospital which are elected individuals of the community and the hospital is funded by the casino.

When someone come in the hospital with a need, it’s handled in every aspect possible. There are so many services available, and if the services are not available they will ship you out to the nearest hospital where it is. To me they do everything they can to help out their patients. Offering dental, mental health, physical therapy, oncology, ob on Wednesdays, pharmacy services, primary care services, and plenty other specialty services in one place is what every hospital needs to care for their patient in every way. Out hospitals don’t do that at home they don’t have one place that will fill every health need you have. Out hospitals will offer you resources, but, they won’t go over and beyond to make sure that those resources are attainable for you or your loved ones, it’s simply putting the information out there.         

There are so many alternative medicines commonly practiced in this culture. When we visited the Cherokee Museum on our second day we got to learn a little about alternative medicines. There was a video that told the story of how plants got their healing power. It started off with humans who were hunger and to ease their hunger they slaughtered the animals which made the animals mad. The animals called a council and said that for every animal killed a disease would be released to plague the humans. The plants like the humans, and had heard what the animals had done, so they called a council and decided to help the humans, so for every disease the plants offered a cure.  This is why every plant has a use. The cures were told to the medicine man who is charge of healing the people. This was a fascinating story. Still to this day alternative medicines are used in this culture amongst the Native people.