An increasing number of programs offer future nurses the opportunity to practice abroad.
The School of Nursing has increased the number of study abroad opportunities for students. Students can now participate in a variety of programs in locations such as Botswana, England, Thailand, Israel, Hong Kong, Australia and India.
These study abroad opportunities are uniquely tailored for Nursing students who want to live abroad and learn more about health care simultaneously. Programs focus on comparative health systems, community health and psychiatric-mental health nursing.
This summer, Nursing professors Mamie Guidera and Dawn Durain will lead a course-related trip to Honduras. The program, titled “Latin America: Maternal and Infant Health Care in the Americas”, is in its fifth year.
The class — which consists of five seminars on campus and a two-week trip to Honduras — engages students in health crises in the area.
Last year, 12 students participated in the class. Some worked in family-care clinics where they took calls, assisted with child birth, ran clinics in nearby villages, provided family care and even provided cervical cancer screening at the field clinic sites, according to Guidera.
Some of the students interested in becoming midwives even had opportunity to the deliver their first babies.
“A freedom that I hadn’t thought about much before this trip is the freedom to practice without so many restrictions. Part of this is leaving behind defensive medicine, or, paraphrasing from Mamie and Dawn, ‘to be able to deliver a baby the way it was meant to be born,’” Nursing graduate student Andrea Eichholzer said.
This hands-on, clinical approach is what makes these study abroad programs better suited for nurses, Guidera said, adding “students really had the chance to roll up their sleeves, do clinical work and learn about culture.”
Consequently, Nursing students hoping to combine clinical practice with academic learning in a foreign country may choose to study abroad.
Nursing junior Karen McVay is planning to study abroad in Brisbane, Australia next spring. She will participate in a nursing exchange program with the University of Queensland.
“I wanted to fully embrace a new culture and really step out of any preexisting comfort zones in order to build new ones,” McVay wrote in an e-mail. “With all the recent and terrible flooding in the state of Queensland and surrounding areas of Brisbane, our time abroad will definitely be [influential] but I think that witnessing all of the recovery endeavors first-hand as well as providing aid ourselves can enhance our experience.”
The emphasis on service learning in the course allowed students to learn first-hand the political and social perspectives on health care, according to Guidera.
“It’s an experience that changes you,” she said. “It can make you get a better idea of what you want to do in life. Some students get completely hooked on working internationally.”
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