Today we visited the Universidad Austral Pilar . This university started as an MD program and has since expanded to a full university. Our first stop here was a tour of the hospital. We were taken around the floors by two nurses who were able to give us information on their schooling and how they work in the hospital. The biggest take away was the similarities and differences in not only the hospital itself, but how they become nurses.
This hospital in particular, had rooms that were not much different than a hospital room in the United States. There was a standard hospital bed, IV machine, TV, and bathroom that looked quite similar to the hospital rooms we have at home. I began asking our tour guide some questions about being a nurse itself and i discovered some pretty big differences. In the U.S. our path to being a nurse is pretty direct. You get a traditional BSN at a 4 year undergraduate program and as long as you pass the NCLETs you are a Registered Nurse. Where has here the term nurse is very diverse. There are a lot of different paths you can take. The suggested and most educated route is a 4 year undergraduate program followed by a 2-5 year program that certifies you as an official nurse. The shorter end of that scale would make you just a general nurse in the areas of adult and older child care. While the longer the program the more in depth specialty’s are taught like intensive care and infant care. This is sorta similar to how after you have your BSN you can go to graduate school to become a specific higher level nurse. Another thing they explained was to work province to province you just have to transfer your license you don’t have to pass that areas boards like you do in the U.S. Those education variance goes hand in hand with the amount of respect the nurses receive. Those that are more educated are valued but those who took the alternative routes I didn’t discuss are often seen as lesser and not respected by some physicians.
Our final stop was lunch and a mixer with current students. Juana was a first year nursing student. We found many similarities in the classes we had to take with the ones she was currently enrolled in. Since there seasons are opposite to ours. There summer ended in March and there end of first semester isn’t until June. This took us a second to get used too and understand how everything for us was flipped. She was so sweet and we had so much in common. She speaks Spanish, English, and German, so we got to talk to her about everything from TV to snacks. We found out that she loves Momma Mia just like us! I think my favorite part of the day was speaking to her about what it’s like living here and describing to her life back home. While obviously the U.S. and Argentina are going to be quite different because we are on opposite sides of the word, there ended up being a lot of things that we both have in common and that was really interesting to learn. She even told us about her favorite drink which is Mate Amargo or as we know it commercially the U.S. Yurba Mate. Today was so fun and I hope to stay in touch with the new friend we met!