ASSIGNMENT IN POINT LAY, WEST OF BARROW

On the flight back from Kaktovik the Friday before last, I talked with Michelle, one of the three other nurses who work in the Wellness Center, the Public Health Nursing Clinic in Barrow.  She was returning from Nuiqsut, a village between Barrow and Prudhoe Bay, both west of Barter Island and Kaktovik where I’d spent the week.  Michelle mentioned that she was hoping to spend more time in Nuiqsut catching up on IMZ (our term for immunizations) as there were many children who were overdue. 

There is an ongoing goal of engaging the community health aides in giving IMZ, but many are reluctant.  They serve the community in other important ways, but most of them don’t like to make babies and young children cry by giving them shots.  Consequently, our due lists for children who are due for immunizations can get to be very high in the villages. 

When Michelle mentioned the possibility of giving up Point Lay to focus on Nuiqsut, in the back of my mind, I hoped that it might work out to pick it up as one of my villages.  The village trips are a great opportunity to work hard, but to also get a break from telephone calls, doing radio programs, serving on coalitions and attending staff meetings.  I enjoy all of these things, but agree with the other nurses that working for a week in a village is very satisfying.  One finishes their time feeling as though they’ve put 100% into their work and accomplished all that they are capable of.  It’s a chance to go to a school that houses all 12 grades plus preschool and Kindergarten, talk with the principal, staff, teachers and to get hugged by just about everyone younger than six.  We often find time to meet with the mayor and hear his or her thoughts about how they see Public Health Nursing impacting their community.   It’s an opportunity to share clinic quarters with itinerant health aides, learning about their work in the village clinics where they go based on need and about their lives in other parts of Alaska.  Itinerant health aides normally spend six weeks working and then have a month off and return to their own village.  It’s all very rewarding and interesting.

On Tuesday morning at a staff meeting, our Coordinator asked me if I wouldn’t mind spending a week with her in Point Lay.  We’d be doing the school screening as well as focusing in catching up with immunizations while Michelle doubled back to Nuiqsut to continue working there.  I was delighted at the thought of our going together as we’d get more done and I always enjoy hearing her thoughts.  Her nursing background in Alaska includes public health and pediatric case management at a small village hospital and she has years of experience in other types of nursing prior to her move here.  She has an excellent memory and when I’ve commented on it, she said that it’s photographic.  It’s easy to see why she is able to stay in tune with the wide variety of topics we discuss at our meetings and that she seems to float through her days accomplishing more that it seems possible.  We’ll go to Point Lay next week with high aspirations.

This week will be a busy one, seeing clients, and digesting and putting into practice the things we learned last week during a State of Alaska clinic visit from our Regional Nurse Manager and two Informatics nurses.  We were given an overview of how to develop a new and updated Strategic Plan and received all day refresher trainings in charting patient encounters.  How three words “charting patient encounters” can sound simple, but have so many complex nuances, is a true oxymoron.  Fortunately the presenters had wonderful senses of humor and took our tough questions and periods of resistance in stride.  But it was a lot to take in and to begin to incorporate this week.

I’ve blocked time off of my schedule to have a due list run for Point Lay and health histories printed on all of the children who are due immunizations as well as plan for what educational materials and how many immunizations we’ll need to bring.  Neither the Coordinator or myself are familiar with the families in Point Lay, so playing a sort of match game with the health histories, putting together those of the children who have parents with the same names, might help us to be more efficient and less annoying when calling for appointments.  On my first trip to Wainwright more than a year ago, I had a due list and multiple health histories, so went down the stack, calling the parents of each child, sometimes five times for their different children without realizing it.  The names were all unfamiliar and new to me.  I’ve gone to Kaktovik five times now and have drawn schematics of the families there so one call can net appointments for all of the children and definitely cause less frustration for the parent who might otherwise answer the phone five times. 

Point Lay is a beautiful little village that sits on a hill above a lagoon, just inland from the ocean.  Its Inupiaq name is Kali, meaning “mound”.  I was there for a day when I first came to Barrow to help out in a health fair and remember that the woman who picked us up when our flight came in drove us around to show us the village.  She was particularly excited as they had wanted a street sign for some time and it (their first and only) had finally been put up. I'll have to take and post a picture of it when I'm there this time.

Wishing you all a wonderful beginning to your week!!!