First Surveyor Assignment

My first surveyor assignment, 1989, was to participate in a joint state and federal survey of a facility for the developmentally challenged. We chose what at that time was the State of Alaska facility in Valdez, Alaska. If you know anything about Alaska you know that the Alaskan Oil Pipeline runs down from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. I had been to Valdez a number of times as a tourist. We all met at the airport in Anchorage, Alaska, prepared to board an Alaska Airline plan to Valdez. The weather was not pleasant. We had some very high winds in Anchorage. They postponed the flight. Later that day the state team and the federal surveyor were able to board. The plane took off. It turned out to be a most exciting flight. The pilot couldn't land in Valdez. My coffee came up off the tray table about two feet. We got off the plane in Anchorage and the federal surveyor said, "I do not have a death wish." Needless to say we substituted another provider in calmer Anchorage for the planned Valdez survey. It was a rough week, as we spent many hours trying to make sense of the new outcome oriented federal regulations for this provider type.

What is a Health Facility Surveyor?

I have been a registered nurse since 1969 and working in Alaska has provided me with many diverse and unique experiences. I wanted to share some of those experiences. One of them was as a Health Facility Surveyor. I started working as a Health Facility Surveyor for the State of Alaska in October of 1988.

People often ask what kind of a surveyor?? They immediately think of a road surveyor. All states have such people who from time to time cause health provider types to shake and quiver. In what we call the "lower 48" Health Facility Surveyors specialize in specific provider types. For example, a surveyor may be trained to conduct only Long Term Care surveys of nursing homes. The Federal Health Care Financing folks train surveyors to conduct different types of provider surveys. Then the federal government contracts with the specific state for the services of its Health Care Surveyors. I worked as a Health Facility Surveyor until January 2003.

Alaskans are always different. We performed all surveys for the entire state including hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, physical therapists, critical access hospitals, rural health clinics and developmentally disabled facilities. That is a mouthful. To be sure you do not get to Barrow, Alaska by automobile. During the time I was a surveyor I traveled the entire State of Alaska and had some very interesting experiences.

Come back for more surveyor stories. To be continued.

Family Vacations

In upstate New York vacation homes, cabins etc are termed "camps". The term camp was used early in the 20Th century to refer to a temporary summer home used by people from New York City. These were generally located in the Adirondack area and usually on lakes. My Dad spent his childhood vacations every year at the Teller camp on Lake Delta, NY. The camp was owned by his grandmother's brother Dr. Howard Teller. This vacation tradition continued into my childhood and many a happy time I spent swimming in Lake Delta and fishing from a boat with my parents. Prior to the building of the New York State Thruway we used to go by car from Fort Lee, New Jersey to Rome, NY and Lake Delta. It was a 12 hour trip through many small ethnic communities in the Catskill Mountain area and on through the Mohawk Valley. We would stop a variety of places for rest. We stopped at the Beech Nut gum factory for a tour and got lots of free life savers and gum, as we watched them make and bottle baby food. We also stopped at the Catholic shrine for Saint Katherine Tekawitha, an Iroquois indian. The grounds were beautiful with a round church that represented the Iroquois nation. There were a number of German restaurants in the Catskills and we would often stop for lunch. For a little girl it was a long trip. I kept saying, "When are we going to get there?" One year I didn't say a thing and they thought I was sick. But in truth I had my little brother Arnold that year and he kept me and everyone else busy.

The Paranoia of Sputnik and Duck and Cover

The Russians sent Sputnik up in 1957. America caught its breath, stopped and anticipated the bomb that was to come and never did. Many things added to our national paranoia including Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the desk in the United Nations. The politicians were very successful in making a business out of war and espionage. They kept us in a constant state of crisis and fear. In school we were required to participate in duck and cover practice just like fire drills. We actually had to get down under our wooden desks and cover our heads with our hands. Now I know that if an atomic bomb had dropped I would have been radioactive dust. I was in high school in New Jersey in 1958 when a FBI agent came to speak at one of our school assemblies in the auditorium. He told us all about the communists who were set up in the store fronts in New York spying on us. All of this served to make the population paranoid., and it scared us kids. We were sure they were coming to get us. People actually dug holes and made cement bomb shelters and filled them with food which is probably rotten by now. We had no idea what real fear was until 9/11. Now we know where our fears should be directed, and that what we fear is not always apparent.