Wow! We are wrapping up day 3 here in Birmingham, the UK on 05/10/2022. Our day has been filled with tons of knowledge and excitement after having a fun-filled day at Birmingham City University. We were able to have several visits with guest speakers who specialized in certain areas of practice that were able to help us better understand the UK healthcare and education system. One of the questions that were brought up was “is our healthcare and education system much different from the UK healthcare system?” Although both healthcare and education systems are sought to be complete opposites of one another there are still similar relationships between both. After having lectures with the several speakers today we were able to compare the systems. One of the major similarities I found intriguing was the similarities with the special educational needs students who have the relatively same system as we do. When we were discussing this topic with Samantha, we learned that they have relatively the same system that is referred to as SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) in the UK as in the US. The only difference in this system was the waiting time to be referred and accepted into the system for help. This was interesting to learn about because it was unexpected to see the same aspect of education as we do here in the United States. However, in the healthcare setting, a lot of things that are closely related to ours were the midwifery setting we discussed. Learning from Lisa today about the midwifery setting in the UK with the same perspective as the job title in the Unites States. This closely relates with ours by the standard of care they administer.

However, a few differences in the healthcare and education system were interesting to learn about today. One of my favorite healthcare differences to learn about was how the GPs (general practitioners) are the “gatekeepers” to the access to specialty healthcare in the UK. While as in the United States we are able to immediately see a specialist for a certain issue. One of the major differences in the Education system is the waiting time it requires to seek assistance for educational needs children. It can take up to 20 weeks in the UK to seek assistance, whereas in the United States it takes less than a few weeks.

Our day has been busy with speaking to new members of the BCU community and learning all about the UK healthcare and education system. It has been exciting to get to acknowledge the similarities and differences between each of the systems.