SUBJECT: I love doing community health nursing.
Getting to go on visits myself, and reminding myself
of how great, how rewarding it is
to sit with someone and sometimes people who
are not at their best.
You bring about healthy outcomes through this.
Maybe it's not hanging IV, but you're talking
about really important stuff.
And motivating change, sometimes you're
strengthening their relationship with the health system.
So it's really a key role, even though it
may seem like sort of a softer kind of nursing.
WellAware aware is really meeting
a need that's not met by other roles in the community, so
the home visit, the building a relationship over time.
We're just talking about each other's lives.
We're not in a rush.
That's where real exchange of information can happen.
The clients we work with, they often
are falling between the cracks in the system.
They often come to us through the emergency room,
and we learn that they're using the emergency
room for primary care.
They're not engaged with the health system in a healthy way.
And, again, we're sort of the bridge to bring them back in.
In planning our program, we spent a lot of time
listening to people's stories, sitting
on people's front porches, going to neighborhood association
meetings, to really hear from people
what they felt their issues were.
It really came to me, through these conversations,
that the number one issue is trust.
That is something that has been right on the surface.
When I talk to people about their stories,
it's five minutes into it that they
start talking about their experience
of segregated schools, of massive resistance in Virginia,
and of different types of discrimination.
It's not very deep.
It's really close to the surface.
Through relationships, people come to want to change.
Just a mandate from a provider, that's sort of a once every
six month, is not going to have the same effect
as listening to someone.
We know we're in a great position
to build trust and renew that feeling,
that the system cares for us.
The system is supporting this work in people's homes.
We want people to trust that the system wants what's
best for them, wants to know their stories,
cares deeply about their situations.
And so trust is key.
It all comes down to trust.