Greetings from Cass Lake! Our group includes Dietrich, Ilana, Yun, and Emily. We drove up here Sunday night after a beautiful dinner at Dr Erdrich's home. The drive was smooth, across flat open roads, through snowy fields lined by clusters of trees. It took about four hours to drive from Minneapolis to Cass Lake. Our group remarked at how light it stayed late, thanks to the time change, bright snow, and flat terrain. We arrived Sunday night at the Palace Hotel and Casino in Cass Lake, where we are staying for four nights. It is a comfortable hotel, with all of us in one room 🙂 The facility is alcohol and drug (though not smoke) free, and quite busy compared to the surrounding quiet area.
Monday morning we drove together to Cass Lake IHS, a 2 minute drive, where we had a tour and HIPAA training. It is a reasonably small hospital clinic, with facilities like an ED, about 8 person inpatient floor, and a few other departments. We then split up to shadow four different providers at the hospital for the day. Each of us had very valuable experiences that we are excited to share with the rest of the group when we reunite! After our full day at the IHS, we drove to Bemidji for the community dinner at Green Mill with the Dartmouth team, the Red Lake group, and community leaders. We then dropped into bed at the Casino for the night. Tuesday we headed back to the IHS for another full day of shadowing different providers. We each saw a diverse and meaningful group of patients with a wide variety of lifestyles and states of health. We then drove to dinner in Bemidji at an Irish pub, followed by a quick voyage into the casino to test our luck at the slot machines. We are happy to be here and learning a lot.
Tags: Indian Health Service
