The view of downtown Portland from "Mountain View Hospital"
Two years ago, I took the opportunity of a trip to the United States to visit several hospitals in Portland on the West Coast, and it was an eye-opening experience.
After arriving in Portland, I visited Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU, which includes a medical school and several research facilities) under the enthusiastic guidance of a friend. According to one source, OHSU is perennially ranked in the top 10 medical schools in the nation, and has a top overall ranking in the research category, with cancer research being a highlight.
In 2008, OHSU received $100 million in charitable donations for cancer research from world-famous Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny Knight. It's not unusual to know about Nike, but not many people know that Nike is headquartered just 40 minutes from Portland. I didn't get to go to Nike's headquarters this time because of time constraints, so I'm looking forward to the next time.
OHSU was built on top of a mountain and is known as the "Mountain View Hospital". You can drive from downtown Portland or take the Tram from the bottom of the mountain to the hospital. It sounds romantic to have a cable car running through a city. My friend said his daughter, who is in medical school, volunteered here during the summer, and it was both fun and enjoyable to ride the cable car to and from work every day.
The cozy waiting area
After arriving at the hospital in the twilight, the clinic was already over. Standing on the balcony next to the waiting room and looking out, the panoramic highway looks like a silver ribbon winding down the mountain, Portland's charm in the lights of the lights in the bright Xu Xu unfolded. A city doesn't need to be too big, as long as there are mountains and water, it will definitely be lively, and that's true.
It's refreshing to walk the hallways of the hospital and see and hear the sights and sounds. Christmas is just around the corner, and the lights on the Christmas tree are still twinkling. The large waiting area, in the soft light of the reflection of the quiet and peaceful, sofa coffee table soft chairs, newspapers, magazines, TV and so on. Instead of a hospital, it is more like the lobby of a five-star hotel.
Passing by the emergency room, the door opened without warning, two nurses launched a surgical car, the car lying full of patients with tubes. The reality of the division between life and death is such that people don't have the courage to take a second look, but only wish for the best.
The Children's Hospital, which is adjacent to the OHSU, is even more full of life. If it weren't for the reminders of metal poles for hanging needles on wheelchairs for patients, it would look like a children's playground everywhere, with seemingly random stops to play the piano, blocks and whatnot.
The corridors are lined with childlike paintings, some too funny to look at, others childlike to look at. The family lounge, like a warm parlor, has a sofa, coffee table, TV and water cooler, and a free laptop.
The OHSU, Children's Hospital and Veterans Hospital buildings are separate and connected, with direct access from the top floors. Funny enough, when I returned to the OHSU from the Children's Hospital, the automatic door wouldn't open no matter what. I was puzzled when I bumped into a nurse who was passing by with a trolley. My friend inquired and learned that this was a "one-way street" and that an ID card was required to enter the Children's Hospital from the OHSU. The nurse knew that our car was parked in front of Children's Hospital, and enthusiastically asked us to follow her "into the gate", saving us the trouble of going out of the main entrance of OHSU and then taking the long way around to the parking lot.
It was once told by a doctor in the U.S. about the U.S. Veterans Hospital, and I was very curious. Why would there be a separate healthcare system for veterans? How is a VA hospital different from other hospitals? Where do the doctors who work with disabled patients all day long come from and what are their skills? The mind was filled with question mark after question mark. To my surprise, the Portland Veterans Health Care Center (Veteran Affairs Portland Health Care System, or VAPORHCS for short) is right next door to OHSU, with an enclosed air corridor connecting the two buildings. It's a real step in the right direction.
When it comes to U.S. Veterans Hospitals, you have to know a little bit about U.S. Veterans Day. The U.S. federal has many public **** holidays, such as New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, Independence Day, Washington's Birthday, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Veterans Day (Veterans Day, referred to as VA) for November 11, the country held a variety of celebrations and commemorative activities, such as the Veterans Day parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, and commemorative ceremonies next to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., and so on. From presidents to citizens, without exception, veterans, especially those who have fought in all wars, are honored.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (UnitedStates Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA for short), established in 1989, is the second largest cabinet department after the U.S. Department of Defense in terms of the number of employees. It has been said that U.S. veterans are "hobos in tattered uniforms," but today they enjoy world-class standards of treatment, with the VA providing them with benefits including disability compensation, pensions, and tax incentives, setting up a specialized health care system, funding their re-education and vocational training, and providing burial services after death. burial services, etc. The VA also receives an annual budget from the government for veterans' health management, psychotherapy and services for women in the military, among other things.
On U.S. highways, you'll often see signs with the word "VA" on them, telling people how to get to veterans' hospitals, which is not a small number of hospitals.
Along the corridor, three steps a stop five steps a look, from the design style to the display of items, and OHSU and pediatric hospitals are no different, people seem to be in the art gallery lounge area, or hotel lobby, frozen and hospitals can not be related, of course, this is the surface impression. I heard from a friend that when a U.S. veteran goes to a VA hospital, the amount of money he pays for medicine is determined by the degree of disability. Generally speaking, the disability indicator of 50% or more is completely free, and between 10% and 40% of the medical fee is very little. Non-disabled veterans pay a percentage of their medical bills for visits and physicals.
The Portland VA Medical Center, which has 277 beds, 362 doctors and 1,051 nurses, had 90,351 outpatients and performed 7,444 procedures last year. Friends also said that many hold a U.S. doctor's license, J1 visa in the U.S. hospitals working in the foreign doctors, after the expiration of the work period, in order to maintain the continuity of the work, some will choose to volunteer at the VA hospital, while contributing to the community, while improving the level of medical skills, the U.S. society promotes the "American spirit of volunteerism" here to get the full and good embodiment. The American spirit of volunteerism, as promoted by American society, has been fully and well manifested here.
Draped in a blanket of night, embarked on the return journey. After a few hours of walking around, I had a basic understanding of the Marquam Mountain Hospital Cluster, which consists of OHSU hospitals, two renowned pediatric hospitals, an eye center, and the Veterans Portland Healthcare Center.
In the age of information explosion, beautiful articles describing how good Japanese hospitals are are often the subject of a crowd push, so there is no need to waste ink here. If I had to compare hospitals in Japan with those in the U.S., I'd take the corridor walls as an example, which, to my well-frogged eye, have a dizzying array of words, photos and paintings.
The text is usually hospital descriptions, health talks and various information. From the management to the doctors, each hospital is described in great detail, and in some cases even the newest resident is proudly featured. The faces of several Asian doctors mobilized our curiosity, trying to determine which country they were from by their names and concluding with only a rough guess. A painting, either in abstract or realistic style, made the hospital cozy and welcoming.
I remember sharing an elevator with a white woman in her thirties at a pediatric hospital. Seeing that she was carrying two large, bulging bags, my friend greeted her warmly with pleasantries. She responded cheerfully that because her daughter was hospitalized here, she came once a day and brought a lot of things home to wash. I really like the state of conversation between strangers in Western society, which is intimate and natural, like chatting with a neighbor.
When I traveled to the United States, I went from city to city, visiting hospitals and writing about them, thanks to the "double-duty" doctors who gave me the task, and my friend's enthusiastic guide.