Clyde River

Last summer I had a great opportunity with agency nursing to go to Clyde River on the northeastern coast of the Baffin Islands - Nunavut. The community of 800 people (half of which are under 18!) has a school, two stores and a health centre. The work, culture and environment were all mind blowing and the diversity within Canada still leaves me awe struck.

Northern nursing was learning to do your personal best with very limited resource. As a registered nurse you are the health care provider to the community serving as the lab tech, x ray tech, pharmacist and doctor. I learnt to poke a patient for lab work, put it in a centrifuge, once separated pipette it onto a slide and put it under a microscope to literally count the number of white blood cells to get a white blood cell count! Other "urgent" blood work was only sent out once a week and you would have to wait days for the result to be faxed back. If you aren't a health care profession this may be too much detail but in a city or town a nurse has all of this done for them and the only thing to do is look on a computer screen to find a lab result! X rays were the same thing with learning to work the machine and settings, take the x ray, run it through the old machine in the dark room and then try to interpret it. I felt like I was on a crash course of dummy doctor. I was terrified to diagnose and even more terrified to prescribe and deal with emergencies. Unfortunately I was never trained for any of this as it is far beyond the normal scope of practice for an RN. The other nurses had outpost nursing experience and quickly tried to show me the ropes only to realize that my agency had sent me unqualified and way over my head!! I got through the experience with a lot of leaning and laughs as well as a new found deep respect for all outpost nurses and what they go through!

The culture of the Inuit was very interesting and refreshing. Growing up in northern Alberta I often sensed the the native population had lost their culture. Only the elders spoke their native tongue, traditional foods and hunting methods were obscure and drugs and alcohol startlingly ever present. Clyde definitely had its share of problems and for a fly in, dry community there were a lot of drug and alcohol related problems. HOWEVER the people there wear some traditional clothing, speak the language (even the children) as a first language (and the younger generation speak a little bit of English), continue to produce traditional culture artifacts (carvings, painting, etc), hunt the land (they really do kayak and use spears!) and dog sled! I was able to quad out to the coast line with Clyde river native who I worked with and take the dog sled team for a run. The entire team is tied up for the summer by a river on the coast and they quad out there and feed and run them. They untied the team and started up the quads and the team ran next to us. It was surreal to see this team of huskies running full speed for many kilometres, whales spouting in the ocean and a few remaining ice flows in the background. There were also other natives out there hunting seals. We stopped and my co worker's husband had a fresh seal which he had hunted to feed the dogs. He cut it, gutted it and threw it to the ferocious dogs. While the dogs were feasting we had some traditional Inuit tea. It was a real northern experience on par with any world travelling i have done thus far.

The north is a really beautiful, diverse and stunning land. The Inuit people are a fascinating, gentle people who love a great laugh (a lot of the laughter was at my expense as one of the only visitors to the area!). Although I now know that I am not cut out or experienced enough for any more outpost nursing, I do know that I would travel to the far north again in a heart beat. I'm proud that Canada encompasses this area that so few know about or even acknowledge. Its a little diamond in the ruff and I feel grateful to have experienced it.