From left, Jennifer Clark, Ashley Havlena and Mikaela Sandhorst take a boat ride on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China.
Photo credit: UNMC blog
When people get sick in China, the health care they get is a far cry from the kind U.S. patients are used to, says nurse-to-be Jennifer Clark. "There they have six to eight patients in one room," the University of Nebraska student said. "They have to pay extra if they want their own room."
Clark and a couple fellow nursing students spent October in China under a University of Nebraska Medical Center exchange program. After three days touring Beijing, they spent three weeks at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, working with nurses and patients.
From the type of care to the clothing the medical staff wears, the nursing students found China to be a world apart from the U.S. Many patients hope to make friends in their crowded hospital rooms, for instance. This is far different from America, where people complain if they have to share a room, Clark said. She also was struck by how Chinese nurses wear traditional outfits, complete with white dresses and hats, instead of the scrubs common in the U.S.
Clark and her fellow visitors, Mikaela Sandhorst and Ashley Havlena, grew fond of the babies at the hospital. In China most parents are restricted to having one child, so babies are sometime abandoned. "There were just these random cribs in the hallway," said Havlena, "one baby who was one-year-old and had spent her whole life living in the hospital."
The hardest part for the Nebraskans was the language barrier, "We went into this situation without knowing the language," said Havlena, "and all we knew was hello, thank you, and do you know English?"
The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha has offered an exchange with China for nursing students for the last three years. The program was extended to nursing students on the Lincoln campus this year.
Trading places, Chinese students will visit here in the spring. For all participants, all costs were covered except for the roughly $900 airfare. The nursing students got housing and food, just as their Chinese counterparts will.
The nursing track at UNMC is a five-year-program, with two years of general classes through UNO, UNL, or UNK. Thereafter, they must be accepted into the nursing program, so for these girls this trip is just a bonus.
Jennifer Clark, left, and Mikaela Sandhorst hold two babies in the Shanghai Children's Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit.
Photo credit: UNMC blog
"For the one, maybe two times that I do get a Chinese patient, I will know what to expect and can hopefully meet their cultural needs," said Havlena.
Even though textbooks spell out cultural differences between countries, the experience was far richer. "Just having that cultural awareness" said Sandhorst "it's just so much different when you are actually there."
They recommend exchange programs to any nursing student, and such students may soon get more choices. UNMC is setting up similar programs with India and Russia, "they want to get global relationships around the world," said Havlena.
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