Back to Work!

Aloha! After about 5 weeks off from work, I began at Straub Hospital this week. It is in downtown Honolulu. I had classroom orientation 4 of my 5 days this week. I am not used to sitting in a classroom as a nurse, but it was good to get back to a routine. One thing I am really happy about being hired at Straub is that it is associated with Hawaii Pacific Health, which is a company that merged 3 hospitals together on the island of Oahu. They really like to "take care of " their employees and encourage career development and growth within the organization. After about 6-12 months at my current position, I will be able to apply for new positions on other floors if I want. I am really interested in working at the Kapiolani Women's and Children's Hospital, and hope to get in there sometime within the next year. Working in the NICU or on a Mother/Baby Unit is a job goal of mine and I may be able to achieve it through this organization. I already miss working with those babies since I have left OCAHS. So we will see where my job brings me! I am just glad to have been hired so quickly. Some nurses at orientation said they had been trying to get in for 2 years! It makes me realize that this was all a part of God's Plan!

I was also able to shadow a nurse on my floor on Thursday for 8hrs. It was great to get a feel of how they do things and fun to get to know some of my co-workers. Culture here is a huge thing. It is a melting pot and  I am a minority. I figured that out quickly this week at orientation. We had a speaker ask our group of 40 to look around the room and note what the main ethnic groups were. The bottom line, Caucasians are the minority. I was even asked to talk about my cultural differences from the locals in Hawaii. It is different to be the minority in this culture and for people to say, "I can tell you are from the "mainland" or the "midwest" by the way you talk." :)

Another discussion we had was that spirits are pretty dominant here and can be a cause of illness. "Cupping and Coining" are common practices here to rid the spirits from the body. (Cupping is applying suction cups to the body to "draw the spirit out." It causes hickey-like welts throughout the body, but they are primarily seen on the back. Coining is what it sounds like. You take a coin (nickle, quarter, or whatever and rub it in a linear type motion on a skin surface. This causes a reddened abrasion and line marks on the body. It is a way to treat certain physical symptoms a person may be feeling.)

I previously took BSN classes in "Cultural Competency" and learning what these methods were and what they meant to the cultural group. I never thought I would actually work with patients who practice them. In my orientation, the speaker even mentioned that "NOT everyone believes in spirits and how they affect the body as health care providers you need to be sensitive to them and try to understand what they believe also." That was the moment that I felt the most uncomfortable and knew that I was one of "those" who don't believe in the whole spirit thing.

Another huge cultural change that I am not sure I will fully adjust to is the food culture here. It is so different from what I am used to! Example: At work on Thursday, the nurse and I were on break in the break room and she told me that there were lots of goodies to eat. When I think of "goodies at work" I think of cookies, chocolate, candy, and more of sugar-high items. Instead, they had :

Half Moon 

which is steamed and filled with some type of meat and vegetable mixture. This looked more like a meal than a snack to me, so I passed on this.

Manapua (pronounced:"manna-pooha")

looks like a warm, tasty baked good. Maybe even sweet. But looks are deceiving, especially when you are thinking it tastes like that and you take a bite and....

taste meat! It hit me like a wall. I was expecting a "dessert" type food. I held my gag reflex as I choked down the manapua. My nurse said, "Manapua are the best, what do you think." I put on my best face and lie, "it is GOOD." :)  I don't like surprises in my food, and it was probably my own fault that I didn't know what manapua was before biting into it. It looked familiar and safe to me. If I would've known what I was biting into, maybe I would have liked it more and been prepared for the BBQ meat... ?

(This is what it looked like after I bit into it.)

So as you can see, things are quite a bit different here than what we are used to. :) 

Another highlight of the week: Ben received a promotion!!!!! :) He was promoted to Chief Scribe at Castle. This means that his current bosses will be leaving soon to move to the mainland and he will be in charge of the other scribes that were hired with him. He will be in charge of hiring/firing, making the schedule, interviewing new scribes and teaching/testing them in a classroom setting, meeting with physicians about their needs for scribes, and also continue to work in the ER. This means that he will probably have more hours and will be more challenged, which is a good thing. Another Bonus: increased hourly wage and being able to make his own schedule. Hopefully we will be able to work out our schedules so we are working similar days and will have a few off together.

That's all for now from Kailua. We look forward to having Ben's family come out in about a week to visit! It will be so much fun to show them around and to just be together.  We hope they love it here as much as we do.

Hope everyone is doing well and has a relaxing weekend! Mahalo!