The teeniest hospital (almost) ever.

Ok, as promised, time to talk about CHETWYND.

Chetwynd is this little bitty town about an hour and a half or so south of Dawson Creek. There are two RDs in DC, one of which does the inpatients, outpatients, and diabetes clinic. The other (who happens to be a fairly recent grad) is mainly a community dietitian who does a bit of outpatient counselling too.

Since my preceptor is just so nice, she decided last week I should go with the other RD just to see Chetwynd. The community RD goes about once every week or two to see outpatients or even to do home visits. She also goes to Tumbler Ridge, which is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous (sadly, no patients to see while I'm here. Sad panda.) So anyway, the RD, the occupational therapist, and I all climb into a Northern Health vehicle and go on our merry way to Chetwynd. The drive is beautiful:

When we finally got to Chetwynd, this was the 'main drag' of sorts. This should give you an idea of how little this town is.

Part of the highway and essentially main street.

 Below is this huge hill that sort of dominates the scenery. We had a patient who apparently hikes up there regularly but tries to avoid the resident cougar. The resident bear is considered less of a threat.

Apparently they have wood carving contests every year. Here are the few I took pictures of; naturally, I didn't realize there were a bunch further up, so I only got the sort of creepy ones. There was a fantastic one of a mermaid curled around a column and about a dozen others. Oh well, the massive praying mantis was still impressive?

And last but not least: the hospital!

Yes, that's all of it.

 Apparently they have about 7 long term care pts, and usually a handful in emerg. We talked to the kitchen lady (yes, that's singular, she had a sweet kitchen though), who said they had 13 at the moment which was considered quite a lot. There did seem to be some outpatient action: We only actually saw 3 patients (apparently they don't always all show up, so that was nice!). The RD and OT both do a lot of home visits, and we rode back to DC with a commode in the back seat. Good times.

This is where I first started to see that outpatient counselling is a lot about knowing where the resources are. You can't really tell people what to do: they don't hear or don't remember. All you can really do in most cases is introduce new ideas to them and hope something catches on, and provide support and lots of information that they can choose to or not to look over. I also sometimes forget how much of this is sort of engrained into us. If you're having trouble keeping track of calories or a weird reaction, of COURSE you'd do a food diary! What could possibly be more straightforward?

Then you ask someone for an example of a protein source and they say, 'Carrots!' Oh, right. Apparently I needed a little reminder that not everyone enjoys spending 90% of their time thinking about food.