Land of the Midnight Sun

It's been almost 3 years since I was in the Northwest Territories and where I was then was worlds apart from Inuvik. Gameti was a community of about 300 people, 1 Legion, 1 Health Centre, 1 school, a tin shack for an airport and 3 nurses. The only way in or out was by bush plane or ice road and it was technically a dry community. By contrast, Inuvik has a population of 3500, a hospital, a post office, a couple of bars (The Trapper and Shivers;), a real airport where you can buy pretty tasty muskox burgers, a library, a community greenhouse, a youth centre, a homeless shelter, about 5 churches including the northern most mosque in North America, 3 grocery stores with exorbitantly priced food and even an RCMP unit. It's a small city up here. Or as my friend likes to call it, it's 'the north, light'. What she means is that unlike many northern communities there's infrastructure and even conveniences making it a lighter, easier way of living in the north. 

It is sunny most of the time here and it's wonderful, but a bit strange. I've been trying to adjust by putting tin foil and cardboard over my windows and making sure I'm in my bedroom by 9/10 to trick my body into thinking it's really night.. although I'm not sure I'm fooling anyone. I bike to my shift at 7am in sunglasses and leave my shift at 8pm still needing my sunglasses. It's wild! Although it rains and clouds blow in at times, it usually doesn't last long until it's bright again. It's incredibly invigorating, which is why I need to be in my bedroom so early on work nights. I can't wait to do some midnight fishing though!

Thus far I haven't seen much other than the inside of the hospital. The Inuvik hospital is much nicer than most hospitals I've worked in down south. You'll hear me refer to 'the south' a lot and when I do I don’t mean Cuba, beaches and pina colatas, but the rest of Canada. It's like people in Toronto who call cottage country 'up north' (which took me a while to figure out they didn’t mean the land of the midnight sun which seemed like a long way to go for the weekend.)

Anyway, the hospital has 51 beds; 15ish long-term care, 14 acute care (where I work) a couple labour and delivery beds, a couple OR beds, 5ish ER beds and a couple palliative beds. There’s always a doc oncall if not actually in the hospital and specialists make their rounds up here every few months. I don’t think I’ve met a nurse older than 35, maybe 40,  most are around my age, relatively early in their career and few have been here for more than 2 years. There’s a high turnover rate despite the high wages. I assumed it’s the long dark winters that send ‘em running back South but more than 1 person has told me they love winters here. ‘There’s lots to do’ they tell me, ‘skiing, dog sledding, watching the northern lights.’ I’m not entirely convinced though; Most people have big flat screen TVs and extensive movie collections. Eitherway most of the nurses are from away and likely that contributes to the transient nature of the staff. In fact I think over half of my co-workers are from the east coast. I even graduated Dal with some of them! Small world. And even smaller when we all run off looking for better work I guess.  In many ways I would say we’ve found it here. The work load, although a varied population of adult, pediatric, maternity, acute, palliative etc., is much lighter.  Last night for example I spent my night shift bathing and feeding newborns..  not exactly my speciality but a nice change from bedpans and needles. In Toronto I would have 5-8 patients per shift, sometimes with very complex care whereas here I have 3-4 on average. And either because the team is relatively fresh in their careers or because they’re from the East coast, they’re all super helpful and friendly;)

There’s also a greater feeling of respect for nurses here it seems. I’m not quite sure why or even how to explain the difference. Maybe it’s that the docs are a bit more laid back, because it’s only their locum, they're here for a few months and then gone again so they have to be more collaborative. Or maybe it’s the type of people the north attracts. Eitherway, it’s refreshing.