We arrived safely to our destination and we have spent the last week learning our new environment and adjusting. We do not have a washer/dryer in our furnished apartment -this I will miss immensely (I have mentioned the obsession that I have with my washer in a previous post). The sun rises here at 0430 and is full sun before 0600 -this is incredibly strange compared to home (we find ourselves waking up before our alarm goes off and feeling like we overslept). The bed is small and the mattress has a sink hole in the middle (we have to throw a limb over the side to anchor ourselves or we wind up sleeping on top of Wookie, who fights to get the “sweet spot” in the middle).
The facility is an interesting piece of history. It functioned as an air force hospital when it was built. It has long since been repurposed, but the old bones are still evident. The staff is incredibly gracious and kind. Any doubt that I had about resuming travel roles is completely gone. I now have days off again and today Wookie and I spent the time hiking through the new, beautiful landscape. It felt wonderful to be out in the sun and fresh air, which brings me to the next topic.
Institutionalization (forgive me if I have discussed this in prior posts). Many skilled nursing facilities have normalized patient care that centers around the convenience of the institution and/or the staff. This means that the staff schedules and routines often dictate when the patient/resident get up in the morning, when they eat their meals, what day and time they bathe, when they go to an activity, when they go to therapy, take their medications, go to bed at night and, sometimes, even when they go to the bathroom. In these facilities, the goals surround the physical care of the patient/resident and not necessarily the emotional and psychological cares. The patients and residents in these facilities spend their time within the facility and rarely go outside in the sun or fresh air (I worked in one facility that patients/residents were unable to open their eyes outside because they had been kept within the building for an extensive amount of time).
I have always been interested in the impact of institutionalization as it applies to the patient/resident. I now wonder about the possibility of the same phenomenon affecting clinical staff. Many of them work long hours with dictated meals/breaks and no sunshine or fresh air. I have spent the last 3 months doing that, 6-7 days/week within the confinements of a structure that had no natural lighting (no window in my office, no window at nurses station or within halls). It was certainly not to the extent that residents experience (I would never want to minimize that), but is it possible that some of my emotional struggle and difficulty adjusting was related to this? Maybe? But it could just as easily have been due to the lack of a work/life balance (we should explore hourly vs. salary sometime related to work/life balance -I have some thoughts on that).
Whatever the reason, I now have a sense of renewed well-being. I am excited that there are so many trails to hike here during the time of year that the weather is beautiful and we have the time to take full advantage of it.
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