Community

This week I had a community rotation. Man, I love them. It's a nice break to have amidst the normal hospital routine. Today I worked with an RN from ECI, or Early Child Intervention. She basically makes home visits and plays with the child for about 30 minutes and then talks with the parents to identify needs and coordinate care...because these people are usually receiving support from more than one organization.
She is great at what she does. At the first home we visited, CPS was investigating, and the dad was really mad at them. He also had frustrations with WIC, and numerous other people. She gently pointed out that while he may all of these people as threats, they are really good because they want what's best for the child. She said it in a really good way to where he couldn't argue.
The next house we went to was really sad. It made me mad. There was a cute, chatty, smart, controlling 2 y.o. that was next door to my patient's room last week in the hospital who, apparently, is in the hospital all of the time. In fact, I saw her earlier in the semester, too. The whole staff of nurses at S & W loves her to pieces, and understandably so. Anyway, it was her house we went to today. She is in foster care, and all of her foster brothers and sisters (probably about 8 total) have serious medical problems. They each have their own nurse. There were 5 cribs in one room and three or four in another. It was a mini hospital. The RN I was with mentioned that some of these foster parents treat having kids like it's a little business. It's hard to see such a promising kid in a place like that, instead of a normal family...whatever that is.