“Spiritual Healing”: New Article on Travel Nursing at Indian Health Service Facilities

FOR TRAVEL NURSES seeking a new understanding of America’s earliest residents, and an adventure across some of America’s most gorgeous and remote reaches, my most recent article for Healthcare Traveler magazine, “Spiritual Healing: Traveler Opportunities With the Indian Health Service,” will help them explore this career option through the eyes of two of their enthusiastic colleagues:

Healthcare travelers are privy to scores of hospital warning signs in careers marked by new places, but few are as singular as the one John Rigby, RN, noticed recently that was posted on the closed door of a patient’s room in Tuba City, Ariz. “It’s the first place that I’ve been where they have a sign that says, ‘DO NOT ENTER: CEREMONY IN PROGRESS.'”

The note, while simple, reflects how the beliefs of the Navajo Nation permeate the environment of the clinics and hospital that make up the U.S. Indian Health Service system. And, it’s one of the aspects of tribal culture that Rigby and his travel partner and fiancée, Christine Ott, RN, have come to appreciate and respect while living among their patients.

Sharp-eyed observers of this blog will note this isn’t the first time I’ve written about mobile healthcare professionals caring for Native American populations. In May 2010, I wrote about locum tenens physicians who have visited IHS facilities in HT‘s sister publication, Locum Life, in “On the Reservation: Providing Locum Tenens to Native Americans.” In this newer article, I was able to speak with two nurses who visited a different part of the vast Navajo reservation than the Northen Navajo Medical Center in the Shiprock area mentioned in my earlier work. But do check out the LL article as well, especially for the tale of Dr. Greenlee, who serves the tiny Havasupai Nation from the bottom of a canyon accessible only by foot, helicopter, or mule.

You can read many other articles I’ve written about mobile healthcare careers here. And if you’re looking for a writer who can transport your readers to the raw beauty of the American Southwest or anywhere else, drop me a line!

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