Today, May 9th, we started the day with an amazing lecture by Samantha Parry, a senior lecturer and SCPHN School Nurse. Samantha was so nice and well-educated on everything that involved the health and prevention of health issues in school-aged children. In the UK, school nurses are actually not based in schools, but instead in the community. In the school there is actually just a first-aid trained individual. School nurses instead take care of all school-aged children and their families within a community. Samantha emphasized the importance of holistic care in children and preventing health issues and disparities that have a lifelong impact on children. I appreciate how heavy the emphasis on prevention is in children, education, and health in the UK because the US allocates the most money into tertiary health promotion which treats issues/diseases after they are already affecting a patient. The US currently needs to invest more time and money into preventative care, but it is difficult as not many nurses go into community nursing and regions of lower socioeconomic status lack the funding/resources needed to prevent future issues. The UK does have a shortage of school nurses, but they still have mandatory check points for all children and versatile resources available for free.
School nurses essentially provide safeguarding for children, and go into schools or work in free walk-in clinics to educate young people so that they can be healthy adults. School nurses work with agencies to identify risks and help young people be aware of these risks. When a woman is having a baby, she is taken care of by a midwife, and then 10 days after birth the mom is discharged and a health visitor takes on the child for the primary care of the infant. Health visitors can go to the house of mothers and babies until eventually the school nurse takes over when the child becomes of school age. This creates a seamless transition of health and care from birth to adulthood for people living in the UK. The UK follows the Healthy Child Program where the government states what communities need to deliver and this creates the model for health visitors and school nurses who keep the child at the center to provide universal, special, and targeted services. Money for school nurses is allocated to local authorities and school nurses then work based on their commission who determines which groups need more or less support.
In relation to my research, there are a plethora of resources for children that come from low socioeconomic resources. Anyone living in the UK has access to NHS resources, including immigrants of people new to the country, as long as they go to a general practitioner (GP) and have an address. There are even resources for the homeless who can access emergency care. School nurses have robust assessment tools to ask hard questions and screen children for possible abusive situations or social determinants that come along with being of a lower socioeconomic status. School nurses also educate those of lower socioeconomic status on funding that they have access to and that they can even provide people to help fill out documentation. Also, they work with community baby banks and food banks that rely heavily on donations, but provide resources to those who who lack them.
Next, we had a talk with Jonathan Gadsby and Chantelle Smith who gave a lecture on mental health nursing and the history of Birmingham which explains why it is so diverse. Birmingham is actually the only city in the UK that is minority majority, meaning there are more minority groups living in Birmingham than the typical white majority. We were also introduced to multiple authors and their perspective on psychology and psychiatry as well as their views on medication for mental health illnesses.
After this talk, we had a Jamaican nurse with the Black Heritage Walks Network share what it was like working as a nurse in the UK during the 1960s. It was so nice to hear her experience, and she was very insightful in answering our questions! We followed this discussion with a Black Heritage walking tour throughout Birmingham followed by dinner at Jamaya, which is Jamaican cuisine.
The group studied outside together and enjoyed the beautiful weather!
This is us waiting for our dinner reservation at the end of our Black Heritage Walking Tour!
This is a statue of men who were great innovators in the UK, but they actually made all the chains that were used for slavery, despite claiming to be against slavery.