Finishing up our last day at Birmingham City University with the wonderful people we met we were able to give our presentations! Although we were all a little stressed out and nervous about these projects it was definitely a great experience in the end. With everything we learned at the university and our own research, it was amazing to see the results. Our topics in our presentations ranged from mental health, sexism, racial disparities, and immigration groups. There were so many diverse topics we discussed with each presentation and the impacting factors on them.
After our presentation on mental health, we moved on to the next group talking about immigration. I found that the class disparities with this issue are very interesting to hear about. It was interesting to see the differences between each class and the resources they can gain. It is different in the UK and the US with the major differences not only in the country but in different class ranges because of the resources available to a specific class. Another major topic that was brought up was the language barriers in each country. It’s terrible to look at how affected both of our countries are by this issue. So many places only speak one specific language, which is mostly English or Spanish which makes it extremely difficult for immigrants to transfer. It was a great presentation with a ton of helpful information especially as an upcoming nurse working with very diverse populations.
Following that amazing presentation, we then changed our perspective on racial disparities and why they still exist. This was a very interesting topic to explore and learn about in our groups today. Shortly after the start of this presentation, I found that one of the most interesting facts that I did not know was that in history black people were used for medical experiments. It was a horrifying fact to find out however, I never knew this and was never taught this in my history lessons. It was crazy to find out the experiments they did and how awful this was. Not only was it already a horrible history but on top of all of that to learn this was something I didn’t expect. Their presentation wasn’t even based directly off of this but had a huge impact on the research that was explored. It was used to explain the theory of why there is such distrust in the NHS system. The presentation was so in-depth and helpful to my own knowledge not only about racial disparities but with my own historical knowledge.
Last but not least our final presentation led us to the topic of common sexism issues. In my previous knowledge, sexism is a very common topic brought up in our community. However, even though this topic is brought up often, the knowledge of the topic is poor. It was interesting to find out the ratios of men to women in the workforce of just education and nursing. Another interesting fact we found out was that these jobs are considered “pink-colored” meaning these jobs are for women. Although these assumptions are not true the statistics show that women are more likely to be in these careers. In recent years the rates have changed slightly as men are coming into nursing and education but not nearly the amount to even out the results.
To wrap up our day we had a wonderful group dinner together at a local restaurant very close to our hotel. The food was amazing as always here in England! After our day together we split up to go back to the hotel to start packing! 🙁 We have a long and exciting day tomorrow in Oxford and then we head off to London on Thursday! Big shoutout to the wonderful BCU faculty and students who allowed us to gain all of this knowledge and be able to be nursing and education students during our time here! It has been a wonderful experience and I am so glad we had this opportunity to learn from each other!
