Several Nursing students may be traveling to rural areas in Honduras - but that won't stop them from blogging about it.
As part of the Nursing course, Infant and Maternal Care in the Americas, nine Nursing undergraduate and graduate students will help out in underserved communities in Honduras to improve health care, particularly in midwifery, for two weeks this May.
Students will provide care by taking patient assessments and histories. They will also collaborate with midwives in the area.
The students will teach the midwives new practices - such as managing high-risk pregnancies - and will learn by studying the midwives' techniques, said Nursing professor Mamie Guidera, a midwife and the course's instructor.
In order to create awareness and support for the class's efforts, Michelle Holshue, a student in the class, created a blog at the beginning of this month. This is the third year of trips to Honduras, but the first year it will be documented online.
Holshue said she hopes to use the blog as a medium to gather support in preparation for the trip. She has already posted a request for supply donations, such as suture kits and baby clothing, that they hope to bring to areas in need of them.
Holshue also said she intends for the blog to serve as a link between students in the class and members of the Penn community at home, an idea inspired by a blog from students who volunteered in Mississippi over winter break.
Most of the blogging will be done before traveling to Honduras, Holshue said, but the students will have sporadic Internet access during the trip to update the blog.
Holshue added that blogs draw attention to students' service projects.
"I don't think there's very much awareness in the general Penn community of the work that the students do," she said.
Jennifer Jagger, a midwife with a Nursing master's degree who went on the trip two years ago, said she valued putting her skills to practice in areas that need them.
"[We] got in the backs of trucks and drove for hours to reach these communities and do health screenings," she said.
Jagger added that real change is possible through low-cost education strategies and illness screenings.
Penn is one of seven universities working with the non-profit organization Shoulder-to-Shoulder to improve medical care in various parts of Honduras. On this trip, students will cooperate with Johns Hopkins University medical students.
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