Today we went to Birmingham City University! We walked over this morning at around 8:30 and enjoyed some beautiful weather while on our way. It was a quick 15 minute walk from our hotel, and we arrived as a group right after breakfast.
As soon as we arrived to the school we were greeted by a second year nursing student Gemma. She was very kind and immediately began asking us questions and was very receptive as we had a ton for her. We were quickly ushered through BCU’s beautiful campus and up to the third floor where we were greeted by a wonderful panel of staff. They brought out tan assortment of tea, coffee, water, sparking water, and an array of biscuits to go along with our drinks.
After a brief introduction to everyone in the room and we finished our drinks presentations started. While we mostly talked about education today the first presentation was about nursing much to my delight. Just through this short presentation I was able to begin to understand how nursing work in the UK compared to how it works back home in the United States. To start, because Birmingham and the UK are so much more diverse then the US there is a much greater issue with needing translators and services that can aid nurses in translating while on the floor. Translators and other nurses that are on the floor that may speak that language are often utilized. Many medical services in England are covered by the government. Surgeries, recovery, home care and more are all covered by the government if they deem your case valid. There is also a large difference in the education process at BCU in comparison to Pitt and other US nursing schools. After talking to Gemma and other professors and leaders of the nursing school we were able to learn more about their process. At BCU the students only go to school for 3 years unlike the 4 that we must attend in the United States. But, instead of getting a nice long summer break they must attend three semesters of school a year, only getting 6 weeks of break in total. After talking some more to Gemma I realized how lucky we were to get our summer. The three semester a year create lots of pressure on the students causing early burnout, causing possible retention problems for the school and program. On the flip side of this BCU can push many more students through the program. They can start two grades of nursing students, one at a different semester each school year. Next, it shocked me how quick the BCU nurses had to pick their area of specialty. They had to apply under the guise of becoming an adult nurse, child nurse, mental health nurse, and or a midwife. They were allowed one year of wiggle room to change their mind but otherwise they had to know before they even came to school. I prefer the method we do so that I can try out and experience different floors before I pick one to do transitions on and hopefully get a job at. Finally, the last big difference I noticed today is how much more time it felt like the BCU nurses spend in clinical earlier on in their education. They go out early and for much longer amounts of time, even in their first year. In our first year we take lots of credits worth of hard science classes and basic nursing intro classes, but don’t get to go anywhere near the skills lab and absolutely nowhere near patients.
After the nursing talk the heads of education briefly spoke. I thought the conversation was super interesting as I haven’t heard too much about education at school except for what the education members of our trip have spoken about. Teachers here also go to school for 3 years and spend lots of time working in classrooms, more than education members in America. They can either go to school for primary or secondary school, and then pick an even smaller age range once they decide which school they would prefer.
Today we also touched on some of the research that my group is working on for our project. The teachers in the room were able to speak on the dire mental health situation in UK schools, similar to what’s happening in the US. Many young students go immediately into flight mode and run out of their classrooms, students are having nervous breakdowns before tests and exams, and schools are having to hire mental health specialist to keep the issue at bay which is something they had never had to do before. All of this is very similar to the US and the parallels of students mental health after covid can be unfortunately found across the world, and not in just the US and UK.
