Nurses Studying Abroad by Rachel

Nurses Studying Abroad by Rachel - November 2017 Scholarship Essay

Nursing has afforded me the opportunity to work with families from all over the world. At times, it can be difficult to understand the cultural needs of different groups of people when a clinician has never experienced their culture before. Studying abroad immerses one in another culture. You experience the same media, politics, food, music, family structures and values of the people in the location in which you are studying. If a nursing student were to study abroad, they would better understand the people they are working with and provide better care to their patient.
In most nursing textbooks, you can find little summary boxes listing the values of different cultures. You will find a few bullet points of well-known care preferences of different cultures. These summaries are often vague, stereotypical, and offer little explanation for the values they are describing. In practice, nurses reserve judgement and respect the wishes of the patients and families they treat regardless of whether we have understanding of the cultural influences of their decisions. We are taught to check our biases at the door and told to explore the definitions of wellness and goals of treatment with patients and their families. At times, this could be distressing when decisions your patient makes for their own care clashes with the nurse’s values and ideas of health and wellness.
If I could study abroad, I could provide more holistic care to my patients from different parts of the world. I could study more thoroughly and accurately a different culture and their values before entering practice. This would be most important for my career at this point in my education. As I prepare to transition from bedside nurse to nurse practitioner, I will be ordering the tests and medications for my patients. I would need to understand why a patient may declined intervention that our model of medicine would consider life saving. Perhaps witnessing wellness and health care in their model abroad would help me understand their perspective and values once returning home. This deeper understanding of the patients I care for would translate to more culturally competent care, less moral distress, and higher patient satisfaction.