Now that we have officially been stateside for a few days, my mind has had much more time to reflect on our travels (and my body has had some time to recover from GI and URI bugs acquired abroad). I will admit that as I sat in my first class on Monday, my head was reeling with thoughts of all the patients we had seen and the areas we had traveled to - what a shock to be be sitting in front of a PowerPoint again! As I share some of these reflections, I hope this posts finds all of the Exploring Medicine team settling back into their respective school routines and feeling as lucky as I do to have met and worked with you all.
Although it was unfortunate to be sick during out last few days in Copan, it did give me the opportunity to do some contemplating about the work we had done on this trip before we departed. In doing so, I began to wonder what it would be like to return to the states having seen the large disparity between what it means to have "little access to resources". As a nursing student who is now rotating in an emergency department, I think this is a valuable perspective to have because while it does not change the situations for the patients experiencing that disparity it did highlight the importance of one major component of all health care disciplines: EDUCATION. Because of our short term presence in Honduras, it quickly became clear that to have any lasting impact within these communities you must learn to relate and clearly educate people on practical ways to incorporate health care practices and prevention into their daily lives. While patient education and health promotion is something I have practiced in nursing school, the experiences in las Mercedes and with other communities has given a whole new weight to the importance, as well as new perspectives in how to approach this in an individualized way. I have not worked a shift yet, but I am looking forward to bridging these lessons with my practice here in Durham.
While reflecting over these past few days, I have also found a some time to be really proud of all that we accomplished as a team. I know the statistics have already been listed on how many patients we saw and what supplies were distributed, but there are no numbers that can describe the way that the students came together as a team. Those who were strong in Spanish practiced extreme patience and leadership in teaching the rest and those being taught were invested and courageous enough to really put it to use. There was such a sense of desire to contribute and that fostered a comfort and openness for us to be truly vulnerable. This vulnerability is what I believe allowed us to learn so much from each other and I can only hope that we will all remember that good feeling as we approach team communication and interdisciplinary care here at home.
My mind continually keeps drifting back to a question some of my nursing peers had asked me on our last night out in Copan: what are 3 highs and lows for this trip? The lows were really quite easy to think of considering some of the physical ailments I had experienced, but I had to think very intentionally to come up with only a few highs out of so many amazing learning and life experiences. My first, was just the opportunity to truly be a part of a group again...to sleep on a school house floor with 20 other adults, to wake up at the same time and move through our day together, to learn and laugh together, and at the end of it all to trudge up a hill in the dark to wake up and do it all again. The second high was a particular hike that just our student group took down to a river on our last day at the las Mercedes clinic. Not because it was beautiful, but because there was such a feeling of acceptance and membership in this community. As we walked, the kids ran along with us, played in the water, held the hands of our group members and learned broken English phrases. Our work in the clinic was over at the point of this hike, but this moment in time captured the reality that we had been able to penetrate the invisible barrier between us all and come together, both as a team and with the community. The third high shared on this night was actually a personal triumph. In my practice so far as a nursing student, I take a lot of pride in being able to connect with people in a way that I don't always see other providers take a moment to do. With my background in wilderness therapy and communication, I often feel that if I couldn't do this it would greatly effect the overall outcome of the care I was delivering. With no solid experience with speaking Spanish, I naturally felt a bit crippled during my first few patient interactions in Honduras...as if one of my senses had been taken away. In those critical moments I realized a few things that enabled me to move on: that a smile is universal, that we communicate in so many different ways other than speaking, that most of our patients didn't care if we spoke great Spanish but did care if we were trying to speak to them, and that it never hurts to laugh at your own mistakes. Because that moment allowed me to invest more, to CONNECT, and to eventually feel like I could understand and communicate in basic Spanish, it was certainly one of my highs for the trip.
These are merely a few of the reflections I have had since our return and I am sure there will be many more as I continue to relish in the memories of our trip. We learned today that our reunion dinner is scheduled for the 19th and I am sure I am not alone in saying that it will be nice to return to the group living...if only for a night. I also look forward to the sharing of photos - the ABSN team hopes to get more on the blog soon. As always, thanks for following our travels. I hope that this blog has allowed you to feel that in some way you shared this unique experience with us.