It’s our second day at Birmingham City University. We had our first presentation with the lovely Samantha. She introduced us to the idea of school nurses in the United Kingdom. The title of a “School Nurse” is not protected, meaning anyone can call themselves a school nurse. Individuals who are CPR providers may call themselves school nurses. This system is not safe for school children who truly seek help during school hours. The United Kingdom has been down 35% in school nurses over the last few years. This could have been due to COVID. They have systems to help promote specific ideas. For example, food banks have had a massive increase. Samantha mentioned how the United Kingdom offers something called “chat health” which reminded me of Telehealth in the States.
One of us asked Samantha about paper forms for patients’ health records. She told us that different areas of the country use different systems, which is very interesting because I feel that there’s one main system every hospital uses in the United States to make it easier for transfers. One of the slides she read to us said, “RNs who have completed degree-level study can apply to undertake SCPHN (Specialist Community Public Health Nursing) training”. They give nurses options as to what they can do with their degree and if they want to switch to a different field. There’s many options for nurses in the States and it’s easy for them to go back to school to further their education or even switch their degree entirely.
Our second lecture session discussed topics such as minorities and the East India Company. I found out that Birmingham is the United Kingdom’s first minority city. This makes a lot of sense because people had hired many minorities to perform and work “dirty” jobs for less pay, and they would happily agree because it would mean they had some sort of safeguard. It was very simple to get a job in a hospital since no one wanted to work in them. While talking more with the presenter, he told us that it is actually illegal to promote medication in the UK. This is so fascinating because every commercial you’ll see on television is about medications or vitamins. Social media will also take these medications and hire influencers to promote their product and it ends up spreading a terrible message to our youth. For example, Ozempic, which is an injectable medication originally to treat those with diabetes. The media found out that in return, a side effect is weight loss. Promotion for this drug has been crazy over the past few months and many celebrities are participating in this injection and have been losing crazy amounts of weight. I’m glad that the UK doesn’t promote such products to their citizens.
Our last presentation for the day was from the Black Heritage Walks Network. Here we learned that Britain asked young and energetic Jamaicans to come and fill in jobs. One of our speakers was a nurse and she spoke about how she got her start in nursing. I asked her if the hospitals seemed diverse when she began years and years ago. She said there were mainly only black nurses working in the hospitals because the job was considered not worth it or dirty for the 7 pounds a month they got paid. It was quite interesting and I would have though the complete opposite. After the talk we went on a two hour tour to learn more about the history of Birmingham and it’s heritage. We stopped by a few statues and read their description and it was all very new and interesting information. After that, we headed to an exhibit to learn some more information about the relation between Jamaica and Birmingham. Apparently it was the first time the exhibit was open and we just so happened to be there for the opening.
We ended the day by going to a Jamaican restaurant. I’ve had Jamaican food in the past but I was excited to try it again. This restaurant served us the best food I’ve had here so far. I thought it was nice to learn about Jamaicans the whole day and then end the day by eating food from their culture.
I learned quite a bit today. I learn something new every day, obviously, but it seems like the more time we spend here, the more and more I learn every day. Everyday is more fascinating and I can’t wait to see what’s next for this program.