College of Nursing Students Participate in 10th Year of Shoulder to Shoulder Global Brigades
Five University of Kentucky College of Nursing students traveled to Santo Domingo, Ecuador, through Shoulder to Shoulder Global (STSG), an official campus organization celebrating ten years of engaging academic and community partners in improving the health and well-being of impoverished and underserved communities.
Senior BSN students Amelia Metz, Erika Ventura-Castellon, Sarah Stigall, Julie Lang and Mia Jackson participated on the 10-day interdisciplinary health brigade with other UK students, faculty and community members, May 11-21. This year’s brigade included students from the UK Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Education, Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and for the first time since 2013, Dentistry.
“Going on this brigade helped me understand what different health care professions do,” says Metz. “I could directly see the different kinds of impacts we had on patients in the local communities.”
The brigade was the culmination of months of preparation that included the "Interprofessional Teamwork in Global Health" credit-bearing course. Throughout the course, students learned about Ecuador, how to work in an interprofessional environment and how to apply basic principles of cultural anthropology, sociology, diversity and health care to the brigade experience.
While in Santo Domingo, the students worked five days in clinics, each in different communities. If patients in those clinics needed additional care, they would be referred to the main clinic in the city.
Kathy Wheeler, PhD, RN, APRN, FNP-C, FNAP, FAANP, assistant professor, also participated in the brigade and led this year’s group of College of Nursing students.
“This was an exceptional group of nursing students,” she notes. “They handled everything calmly and efficiently with great critical thinking skills.”
For example, she says, the nurses entered all the patient data – height, weight, vitals and more – in the electronic medical records before they saw the providers. Although the electronic medical records had been available, previous teams still relied on putting patient data on paper. “But this group decided that was inefficient and saw to it the data was entered electronically.”
“The STSG experience is so valuable to health care students and providers,” continues Dr. Wheeler. “It creates a unique situation where every member of the team, and from each discipline, quickly and efficiently melds together and sees health care delivery from a bird’s eye view. They learn to communicate, how to solve problems and how to work together under challenging circumstances.”
This year, the students and faculty were joined by several college deans and University of Kentucky Provost Tim Tracy, PhD.
“It was rewarding to see students out of their element, building relationships with patients while overcoming language barriers, and seeing them identify alternative ways to treat patients when circumstances didn’t allow for standard or optimal practices,” explainds Dr. Tracy in his recent blog. But more than anything, it was rewarding to see students engage with the community, and evolve and grow with each other during their experience abroad.”
The next STSG brigade to Ecuador is Aug. 4-13. The June brigade was focused on health education while the May and August ones are more clinically-focused. At this time, STSG is still accepting applications from physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and Spanish/English interpreters. Application information and a short video about the program are available at https://www.uky.edu/international/shoulder_to_shoulder
