Not much happening in the main OHSU interventional labs today so I crossed the 660ft skybridge (the longest suspended pedestrian skybridge in North America no less) to spend the day at the neighboring veterans association hospital or "VA".
The VA is an organisation which provides a range of benefits and medical care for US military veterans and their families - clearly a huge benefit of military service in a nation with no civilian state health care. It is the second largest department of the US government (after the department of defence obviously) and employs nearly 300,000 staff.
Most VA hospitals operate entirely independently from civilian hospitals but the VA in Portland takes advantage of the local sub specialist expertise by sharing OHSU staff including IRs.
Everything on the other side of the skybridge is slightly different. The walls are covered in military promotional material with the VA "honouring our promise" slogan everywhere. There are signs too reminding patients not to bring firearms into clinical consultations. The patients themselves are a different breed - routinely refusing any sedation or analgesia during procedure and often refusing to remove the baseball cap with the logo of their army unit/ship. A slice of pure Americana.
