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Out of Africa, seven student nurses learn the meaning of nursing
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On a trip to Africa last summer, seven women returned to their roots during a nursing mission. Now, the recent graduates will use those experiences as they begin the careers in nursing.
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Published: December 27, 2009
Stripping down to the basics of nursing is how the very recent graduates from the Cabarrus College of Health Sciences described the July 24 mission they took to Africa.
A group of seven nursing students, Amanda Cormier, Charity Pratt, Meredith White, Ashley Jennings, Cara Wicker, Lee Anne Falls and Sara Scofield raised $3,500 each to pay for the mission.
CCHS requires students in associate degree programs to complete 30 hours of community service before graduation.
The women, who graduated last Friday, wanted to go to Africa.
"Africa was very special for me because I had been wanting to go on a medical mission trip to Africa for years," Cara Wicker said. "I had actually told my husband the very day that I got accepted to nursing school 'now, all I need to do is go to Africa on a medial mission trip the summer before I graduate.' And would you believe it happened?"
Wicker, 25, is one of the seven graduates who participated in the trip.
Sara Scofield, 27, explained a group called Invisible Children came to talk to the students last year. Invisible Children is a non-profit that works to transform apathy into activism by documenting, through media, the lives of those living in regions of conflict and injustice.
"We thought it would be really cool to go to Africa to do some work," Scofield said.
So Scofield and Lee Anne Falls researched and found an organization called ChaRA, which stands for Construction Health and Relief Acts. Ron and Carol McDonald of Kannapolis started the organization, in 2006.
"I asked Melanie Gass, she's in charge of alumni here. I asked if she had any students that had done this before," Scofield said.
Gass, Student and Alumni Affairs Coordinator at CCHS, told her no, but she had a pen in her hand from ChaRA, and suggested they "check it out".
"They were willing to set up a trip for us." Scofield said.
"We were there for 14 days with traveling," Falls said. "We went to Zanzibar in Tanzania. We met with Ron and Carol McDonald before we left, and we knew what we'd be doing there. So we had a plan. Our focus was Malaria prevention and education. She (Carol) said they had a few villages for us to go, and set up clinics."
They thought they knew what to expect when they arrived in Zanzibar. They had all seen news stories on television. The reality of what they had seen through the media was very different "up close and personal".
"Once you get there you don't realize how different it was going to be," Charity Pratt said. "In the city it wasn't too bad, but once you got into the rural areas the poverty was, wow! It was just...that's how they live."
Pratt, 30, now had a new reference point for needy. The houses were mostly sticks in the mud, dirt floors, and holes for toilets, the women explained. All the women seemed to be moved by what they experienced on the trip.
The reaction to the group from the locals were mixed.
"Some were very welcoming, but the last village we went to really had never seen white people before, so the children were scared. They'd be peeking around their parents, and we'd wave at them and they screamed and runaway," Falls said.
Within a few hours they had the children laughing and playing with them. As they sat on the ground the kids encircled them.
"They'd feel you and touch you, I think that lead the way to get them more close to us. With me they had never seen blond hair, so they kept grabbing my hair and touching it. They kept sneaking behind me, and touching it," Scofield said.
In order to be seen by the doctor, locals must first go through education, a malaria-teaching clinic. It was 10 minutes using enjoyable methods like skits to get the important health care messages across. They talked about washing hands, and protecting themselves at night with mosquito nets. After the session only women who were pregnant, and children under five were given tickets to see the doctors. It would be impossible to see them all.
The nursing students did basic exams, to find what might be wrong, and help with medicine, and further treatments if necessary. July is winter for Africa so the women saw a lot of upper respiratory infections.
"It was like 80 degrees though," Scofield said.
"But the kids were wrapped up in blankets," Falls said. "Which was interesting."
All the women hope to expand on this experience during their nursing career.
"I would like to go back with CHaRA. The needs there, around the world even, health care is needed," Falls said.
"I definitely want worldwide experience. I don't want to limit my experience to North Carolina, or the United States. My ultimate dream is to work with the WHO, World Health Organization," Scofield said.
"This has opened my eyes to the opportunities I do have with a nursing background," Pratt said.
"It makes you realize how simple health care can be when you are in those countries, because you don't have oxygen, you don't have so many things, We saw three babies in one incubator struggling to breathe, because they don't have oxygen to help them," Scofield said.
It easy for nurses in America, Scofield believes, to take the things readily available to them for granted.
"You have to go back to the very, very basics of nursing skills. I think we forget how to do that in the United States." Scofield said.
"It was very eye opening how far behind they are, and how good we have it here," Pratt said.
"I decided to become a nurse because I see it as both a job and a calling. I have always been interested in all things medical, but really as a nurse I am able to serve both the patient, and the family of the patient. It means a lot to me that I have the opportunity, daily, to impact lives," Wicker said. "I definitely see doing work like this in the future. My biggest thing is that I wasn't aware that by doing even something so small it could impact so much."
Contact reporter Robin L. Gardner: 704-789-9140
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