MINE project- Captain's blog no.2

So I'm glad I waited until the second day to blog, as Alex nicely explained what the reflective cycle is today, and before this point I thought it was just an excuse to rant.
Yesterday we were shown around the hospital in Pori, it was a very interesting experience partly because I kept thinking about the tag line for the TV show 'Generation Kill'- 'Observe everything, admire nothing'. However there was much to admire, the hospital felt calm and almost homely in comparison to my last hospital placement at North Middlesex Hospital in north London. The tag line from generation kill is relevant because I often think we forget how biased our perceptions can be, observations is possibly the most valuable tool that nurses have, but we are often influenced by our own value systems and do not observe but instead interpret.
As we walked around and I began thinking about nurse/patient ratio's, how much I'd like to kick David Cameron and about how my new career seemed like pushing a boulder up a hill, as all these thoughts spiralled and I started to feel a little angry.
At this point I remembered to 'observe everything', in this moment of observation it occurred to me that the entire population of Finland is 5.4 million in a space of 130,596 sq miles, and London has a population of 13.9 million in 607 sq miles, they are different places with very different cultural and healthcare issues. Simply looking at a quiet ward and assuming this means less sick people and better healthcare would be a naive assumption, it does however make me want to learn about their systems and their problems and here in lies the beauty of exchange programs! The process of comparison is paramount in assessing our individual strengths and weakness, through this experience we have the opportunity to look at our own healthcare systems with fresh eyes, learn from each other and allow our systems to grow and not just stagnate.