Nursing Students Participate in Mission Trip to Rural Bolivia

The most important part of a nurse’s education is the clinical work, which allows them to put their classroom knowledge into practice in real medical settings.  After all, when we end up in the hospital, we don’t want to be a nurse’s first patient! One nursing college is taking clinical experience one-step further, by offering its students the opportunity to provide healthcare in developing parts of the world through its co-curricular learning program.
 
Chamberlain College of Nursing Associate Professor Dr. Susan Fletcher recently led eight of her nursing students from the College’s St. Louis campus on a two-week mission trip to provide healthcare in rural Bolivia.  They helped treat and provide health education to residents of remote Bolivian villages.
 
The mission trip was part of Chamberlain College of Nursing’s co-curricular learning program, which provides students with opportunities to demonstrate and develop their clinical proficiency and earn course credit through community health initiatives both locally and abroad. Chamberlain is the only nursing school in the St. Louis area to offer mission trips for college credit, and is planning to expand the program in 2009.
 
According to Fletcher, the co-curricular program has a profound impact on students.
 
“They go into the trip thinking they’re going to help save the world through their treatment of the many people they meet, but they come away feeling that they have received more from the local people than they could ever have given them,” she said.  “They come away with a greater confidence in their ability and skills to assess patients’ conditions.”
 
Nearly every day of the trip, Fletcher and her team would travel to a remote village and set up a clinic early in the morning. They’d wrap up work at the clinic late in the afternoon, at which point they would travel to the next village—either by hand-crafted canoe, jeep, and sometimes by walking through the jungle, using machetes to clear a path for themselves. Depending on the village conditions and prior communications with local officials, they would either sleep on the cement floor of a school or outside under the stars.
 
Fletcher has been taking Chamberlain nursing students on mission trips for eleven years.  She began the trips because she loves nursing, she wanted to be involved in missions where she could utilize her nursing skills, and she wanted to give back to the community and the world around her.  She also enjoys seeing the transformation in the students, who agree that the Bolivia trip was a life-changing experience.
 
”The mission trip gave me a better appreciation for what we have in the United States.  We have so much that we often take for granted, while much of the rest of the world has so little,” said trip attendee and St. Louis resident Rebecca Neuhart.  “More Americans need to see the disparity and be inspired to do something about it.”
 
Perhaps most important to their education at Chamberlain, the students are convinced that the experience will make them better nurses.
 
“In Bolivia, we were working with a stethoscope and, if we were lucky, a blood pressure cuff and very few other supplies.  We learned how to treat people without using the technology we’re so accustomed to here,” said trip participant Heather Bowling, a resident of Affton.  “The experience will make me a better nurse because I’m better able to diagnose a patient based on what I observe.”
 
Fletcher and the students traveled as part of the 70-person Project Helping Hands team—a group of nurses and doctors who annually dedicate two weeks of their time to help treat and educate residents of remote Bolivian villages.  The Chamberlain students were the only student nurses on the trip—all others were professional practicing nurses or certified doctors.
 
“Numerous times during the trip, the other nurses that were part of our group commented to me how impressed they were by the caliber of the Chamberlain students,” Fletcher said.
 
Building on a 120-year history, Chamberlain College of Nursing is committed to providing the educational foundation and co-curricular learning opportunities that graduates need to become compassionate and clinically proficient nurses. The Bolivia trip and the real-world experience it provides is an example of Chamberlain’s commitment to continued student success—not only while they’re students, but also as graduates who are clinically proficient and compassionate professional nurses.  In 2009, Chamberlain hopes to expand the program by offering trips to multiple countries, such as Bolivia and Kenya.