Today we made our first visit to Birmingham City University ! We walked our way over to campus and made it to the Seacole Building. When we first arrived a nursing student named Gemma met us inside and took us to the introduction room. We had welcome drinks and were greeted by the staff that we will be working with throughout our study abroad trip in Birmingham.
The first talk we had was with the deans nursing deputy. She gave us a brief overview of the health system with details that I didn’t know upon arrival. We learned that to get your nursing degree at university its a 3 year process with limited breaks. Each year only consisted of a total of 6 weeks off and the rest are dedicated to school and fieldwork. Once getting your degree from Birmingham City University, you are able to practice world wide which is a privilege we do not have in the United States. We also learned that when applying to university you pick your specialty in the application. The options consist of adult, child, mental health, and midwifery. You are able to switch your specialty but only within the first year of schooling. If you graduate with this specific specialty and decide that once you are actually in the field you don’t like your specialty, then you have to go through schooling again. Another aspect of their health system is the National Health System. This system is publicly funded and is able to give free health care service for free. The citizens have access to general practitioners and surgeries for free. If the citizens have a need for a certain medication, then they also are able to access this for free. Accidental emergencies are considered covered under the National Health System as well.
After our discussion with the deputy we were able to receive a lecture from primary and secondary school teachers. In the United Kingdom kindergarten is called reception and they group school categories by age. The categories are early years, primary, secondary, further education, and higher education. There are different types of schools for each category. These different types of school are local authority, selective, free, religious, academy, and private. If a school is considered an academy they don’t have to follow the national curriculum. The national curriculum is outcome driven and highly pressurized, which makes it difficult to follow sometimes. The key subjects of their educational system is english and math. They sometimes consider science a major subject but it depends on what major the students are going into. After this discussion we had a break and were able to eat lunch within the university.
During lunch time, the other students and I went to the cafeteria and sat with Gemma. We started to compare our health systems and got into really interesting conversation. Gemma was telling us details about her field experience and how different it is to how it will be done when we start clinical. We learned about the 1 to 24 nurse to patient ratio that goes one within the wards. This ratio is completely unsafe and shows how majorly understaffed the United Kingdom is in the nursing realm. As a nursing student you are allowed to conduct certain tasks within each ward or floor that your head nurses gives you. Gemma was telling us about how she would give medications and IV fluids which you technically aren’t allowed to do until it is properly taught to you. This is just another example that shows the nursing shortage within the United Kingdom. We then started comparing our access to health care within our home countries. We again started to talk about the National Health System within the United Kingdom. My fellow students and I were talking about how amazing we thought it was and that the United States should follow pursuit but then we learned about the downside. The National Health System makes a lot of services free which in turn doesn’t help nurses. The nurses are put under more stress and then aren’t being paid for their increase in work. I learned how most nurses have to cover shifts and sometimes work over 12 hour shifts with no overtime paid. These differences in health care systems between countries have major influences on practices and outcomes.
After our lunch talk we learned about the educational system again and were given an overview on how the levels work. The same speaker talked about educational research because he is working towards obtaining his PhD. From this discussion I learned how educational research is considered a systemic conceptual organization. There are 2 parts to this research that include primary research which is talking about humans and secondary research which has to do with desktop study. We talked about qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research focuses on non-numerical while quantitative research is numerical based. This professor took us through the steps to creating a research topic and how they need to be very specific. We then ended our lecture day with talking about the day in life in the educational system and same-sex schooling system pathways.
I’m very excited about the information that I learned today in the nursing and educational realms of the United Kingdom and can’t wait to explore the Children’s Hospital tomorrow !
