Where in the world

Many of you know that I work at a hospital, specifically I work on a trauma unit which means that we treat many people who have accidents or get hurt that you may read about in the news. Trauma is defined as: 'any serious injury to the body, often resulting from violence or an accident.'  Many of our patients have had very interesting stories of how they got hurt and ended up staying on our unit for a time.  

Some examples would include: bull riding, having their snowmobile run over them while working on it in their garage, getting bit by a lion, gored by a wildebeest, getting trampled by a cow during a cattle drive, "walking along minding their own business and three guys jumping out and stabbing them for no reason at all," and the random gun shot wound which seems to be the special right now because we have five of those this week.  Not to mention the run of the mill things like: car accidents, motorcycle accidents, falling off cliffs while hiking, skiing, snowboarding, and the senior citizens who trip and fall.

Because the hospital is located in the Salt Lake valley close to many ski resorts, crossroads of two major interstate highways, and just a pretty cool place to visit; we tend to treat many unfortunate people who get injured while on vacation.
In the fall of 2012 I came up with an idea that we should get a map to keep track of all the places that our patients come from.  My manager gave it her approval and we were able to purchase a large world map and pins to represent our patients.
About nine months later we purchased an additional United States map because we had so many patients from around the US that we were running out of space.

I did set up a few ground rules about pinning the map.   Any of our staff members are welcome to add a pin to the map if one of their patients is from out of state or country.  (We stopped pinning most of Utah early on because that is where the majority of our patients come from.)                                  A pin can be added if:  1. A patients home address is located outside of Utah. Or  2. They moved to the US less than five years ago, then we pin their location of origin.  

Over the last almost two years we have pinned over 200 different locations and the maps have become a great visual reminder of the care and commitment we strive to give everyone in need.  We truly are giving world class care.