So, the plan remains to move to Canada. As those of you who are up on the whole plan thing are aware, this has been the plan for a long time, and we poke this plan with pointy sticks every so often just to check its not curled up in the corner and died.
It hasn’t, the plan is still the same. Kathryn found somewhere that looks gorgeous, and there are, incredibly, jobs posted to work in the ER of the local hospital. Well, I say the ER. They are to work in the entire local hospital, including the ER, because the entire local hospital has fewer beds than my current ER. I was going to say ‘less than my current ER including the observation ward (8 beds)’ but then I realised the addendum was unnecessary. It’s actually fewer beds than majors and resus combined, completely disregarding the trolleys in minors.
Wow, that’s dinky.
So I’d guess that you just are a nurse there, and that anything that comes in is ER’d right there on the spot. So that all sounded quite fun. And the area is simply gorgeous. The photos of it just make my soul sing right there and then.
I just look at those photos and will myself into being there. So I took it upon myself to explore the two slight problems that exist with this concept. See, you may have noticed that we’re not straight. There’s a certain amount of gayness in our union, and communities out in the boonies can be less than accepting of such things. They can also be awesomely, totally pro such things. Indeed, Hebden Bridge is one fine example of exactly how cool places can be (all things considered*). But some places can be less pleasant, and if, say, you were going to move thousands and thousands of miles and landed up somewhere that was filled with homophobes, that would be bad. So that was problem the first. I have no idea whether they’re pro-or-anti gay, all I’ve managed to discover is that the area is represented by the NDP, which is positive. But hardly a resoundingly solid answer. But at least it wasn’t a *bad* answer. No, it’s the other one which makes things a bit sticky.
So, we found the job spec for the nurse there, and there, after the happy little ‘3-5 years ER experience’ was their Mission Statement. It was….god-y. Quite god-y. And we posited the (optimistic) possibility that it was a phrase more honoured in the breach than the observance… So I’d held onto that until today. When I watched a sort of, well, I suppose an infomercial for the hospital and it turns out that it is really quite a problem, in that the hospital is part of the United Church of Canada, and they’re quite shouty about it. Well, maybe not shouty, but certainly… it’s something they mention and say it’s an important part of how and why they do what they do.
If you can imagine me deflating somewhat, that’s what happened. See, I’m not Christian. I’m sort of vaguely Buddhist, if I needed to put any kind of fixed thing on it, but even that’s really overstating it. But being in a strongly Christian workplace? That would work out to be rather friction filled, I suspect. I’ve helped patients maintain their faith, that’s fine, but I think I would struggle and find myself really uncomfortable in a place where it seems expected to make Christianity part of your life. Ah well. Never mind.
And I’d gone and subscribed to this blog’n all. Still, I guess it’ll give me a flavour of life in remote Canada, anyhow. Feh. So I guess we keep on looking :-/
* Don’t you just love NPR? I love NPR almost as much as I love the BBC.
