Birmingham City University was about a mile walk from our hotel this morning. We all walked as a group in our business casual outfits on the historic streets of Birmingham. Once we arrived at the university, I took in the beautiful modern style building surrounded by nature. As soon as we approached the university we all stopped to take pictures. The bright and welcoming design of the university did not stop on the outside. As we entered the building, we saw colorful posters promoting equity, inclusion, and diversity. We saw students attending classes and studying in the library. BCU is a fantastic school with endless opportunities for all its students and I am so grateful to be able to listen and learn from their faculty and experts.
Our introductory speaker was the Deans Nursing Deputy and she addressed healthcare accessibility in the United Kingdom. The clean and efficient public transportation that exists in the UK allows for easier and more affordable access to healthcare for its citizens. Additionally, for foreign speaking asylum seekers or immigrants in the UK that require healthcare utilize a government program called the Language Line. Having this system in place promotes healthcare equity and accessibility to some of the most vulnerable populations. I recognized early on from the presentations that the UK’s systems have a team-like framework which leads to better education and healthcare outcomes. Everyone in both systems work together to effectively deliver quality healthcare and education.
She also spoke about BCU’s nursing program. It is a three year program with few breaks and runs on terms rather than semesters. The nursing students receive a combined total of six weeks off during each year in nursing school, but they are employed straight away after their three years of education. They graduate anywhere from 800-1000 nurses a year and with their degree they are able to work anywhere in the world. Their program is exactly split between learning the theoretical information of nursing and the other half is spent in clinical settings. A nursing student at BCU named Gema said she works a couple of jobs while attending school and working crazy clinical hours. She said she must work to afford her education at BCU and is frustrated that her clinical are unpaid because the student nurses act as extra helping hands in hospitals rather than spending quality time learning from their assigned unit and nurses due to the nursing shortage crisis in the UK. She works endless hours with no to little breaks. I learned from both the Dean Nursing Deputy and Gema that the nursing shortage crisis is relevant in both the UK and the U.S., but the UK’s healthcare system is quite different than ours. Women’s health is at the forefront of healthcare concerns in the UK and the NHS is the National Health System that assures free services and access to general practitioners. However, the UK also faces excessive wait times in emergency departments of their hospitals due to individuals lack of access to healthcare. The U.S. faces the same issue and it is essentially due to the healthcare system failing its citizens who are simply seeking quality and general healthcare that is not necessarily emergent. The vulnerable populations consisting of the homeless and asylum seeking go to emergency healthcare facilities to obtain access to general practitioners in both the U.S. and the UK due to lack of support and access from their environment and government.
The education speakers were also fascinating to listen to. I learned that student debt is also a contributor in the UK deterring students from obtaining higher post-secondary education. To combat the financial stressors and anxiety with starting a uni career there is a student union at BCU that provides support and advocates for the student’s best interests. They are in charge of student-led organizations that ultimately bring like-minded individuals at uni together. These societies created by students promotes involvement, inclusion, and diversity. It is a brilliant organization that should be implemented into the U.S. universities.
Listening to a part-time PhD student as well as a professor, I learned that social studies is not considered a core subject in the UK, but rather a special topic. They believe the foundational values of education are dependent on communication and language, physical development, and personal and social development. This foundation is built upon the idea that without focus on these core values, all other areas of an individual developing from education will ultimately fail. The U.S. is divided on core foundational values for their children obtaining education which creates learning disparities. He then talked about what research means. He explained that it is not a narrow answer or fact but rather a collection of meaningful data that can either be primary or secondary or qualitative or quantitative. Primary research involves humans and secondary research involves collecting data from sources. He ran us through an exercise that made us think of a research statement that was as specific as a leaf in a forest. His analogy to make our topics as specific as a leaf in a forest allowed me to understand how to write a proper and collectable research statement.
Overall, the speaker and student interaction I received today at Birmingham City University significantly impacted my way of thinking about comparing the systems of the UK and the US. I am so excited to continue programming with the excellent staff and students at BCU during this study abroad to learn more about the intersectionality between childhood education and healthcare in the UK compared to the U.S.