Study Visit To India
Students and Staff from the School of Nursing visit the Dr Somervell Memorial Hospital in Kerla, India. Cathy Bernal, Senior Lecturer, reflects on the trip.
In March 2008, I accompanied a mixed group of students on the Interprofessional programme and two academic colleagues on a visit to the Dr Somervell Memorial Hospital in Kerala. On arrival in the blazing heat, we were also warmed by the kindest and most attentive of welcomes; it even included a parade, complete with a windband! We were accommodated in the hospital itself, in a disused but perfectly comfortable ward equipped with en suite bathrooms; meals were taken communally, and our thoughtful hosts always supplied a European alternative to the local cuisine for anyone insufficiently brave to sample the local cuisine (I can recommend vegetable curry for breakfast, especially if made with large chunks of fresh ginger – most refreshing).
As a group of local nursing students had been assigned to “buddy” our students, each day we allocated the pairs to a different service in the hospital in order to maximise the learning opportunities for the visitors. The Indian students largely spoke very good English, and proved very adept mentors for their companions. The Christchurch students were fascinated both by the surprising similarities to healthcare in the UK, and some very marked differences; amongst the latter were the expectation that patients’ food would be supplied by their families (who often brought floor mats to sleep outside the ward where their relative was being treated), and the fact that psychiatric patients were accommodated in the general medical wards – usually in a locked side-room. Students were also amazed by the local’s capacity for enduring pain without complaint – this exercised particular awe and interest in the obstetric wards.
On every evening that it was possible (social outings arranged by our hosts at this time of day were deliciously frequent), we organised clinical supervision for the students, and it was during these sessions that they were able to express the often strong emotions engendered by their experiences. The groups proved very supportive, but it became clear very early on how much students from different pathways were learning about each other’s professions; this was because as part of the daily allocations we had where possible allocated each CCCU student not just to an Indian buddy, but also to another CCCU student whose pathway would give them some knowledge needed to explain the experience of the day ahead to one to whom it would be more novel – for example, a midwifery student would accompany both a mental health nursing student and the latter’s buddy to an obstetric ward. It therefore became clear that the trip to Kerala was providing an interprofessional learning opportunity that had not been anticipated by either the students or the escorts; as the result of this, a retrospective paper was published describing the experience which also contemplated the implications for IPL. See Bernal C, Gilbert L, Kelly A & Smith A (2011) A Passage to Interprofessional Learning. Nurse Education in Practice 11, 6, 406 – 410.
Our study visit to India therefore offered rich learning opportunities for both students and staff, and I believe that later visits by the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing to Kerala were able to build on the lessons learned – particularly, I understand, the latter.
Cathy Bernal: Senior Lecturer