Today is Monday and our first full day in Birmingham. To start our day off, we took a bus to Birmingham City University. The bus we took was a double decker city bus. It was very cool to sit on the top floor and be able to see the city start the work week as we drove by. When we reached our bus stop, it was raining. Fortunately, the campus was a short walk from the bus station, so we did not get too wet.

At BCU, we were welcomed by Chinenye. Chinenye is a professor at BCU as well as a nurse who specializes in burns and wound care. She gave us a quick tour of BCU’s center campus and then took us to a classroom to learn a little bit about the general process of nursing education in the UK. We were surprised to learn how different the process of becoming a nurse is in the UK than the US. The first major difference is that in the UK, students specialize their training right away. In the UK there are four main specialties that a student will pick, the specialties are adult, pediatrics, mental health, and learning disabilities nurses. This is different from the US system because all BSN students will graduate as general nurses and then specialize later on. A second difference is the amount of time it takes to become a nurse. In the US, BSN students will go to college for four years whereas nursing students in the UK study for three. While this sounds nice, the shorter education time is due to the fact that UK students do not have the summer semester off and study the whole year. The third difference that stuck out was that nursing students in the UK do not have to take the NCLEX. The exam that is most similar is the Objective Structured Clinical Exam, which is a practical exam taken by nursing students in the UK.

After Chinenye’s welcome speech at the center campus, we took the bus to BCU’s South Campus where the nursing building is located. Compared to the Oakland Campus’ nursing building, the BCU nursing building was open and lively with lots of windows and natural light. We were told that the nursing building is called the Seacole Building. It is named after Mary Seacole, a black nurse whose impacts on nursing can be seen to this day. Seacole was known for her work with wound care during the Crimean War despite racial barriers preventing her from joining Florence Nightengale’s official nursing team. Today, her impact is seen in the push for culturally competent, patient-centered nursing care. It was nice to learn that the building was named after a woman who moved the field of nursing forward and not just a rich white man like many of the buildings in Pittsburgh.

Once we had a tour of the Seacole Building, we settled into a classroom where Chinenye gave us an educational lecture of burns and burn care. She taught us that although burns are low-incidence, they are high impact. Burn patients often face lifelong consequences such as physical disabilities, deformities, and PTSD. Families of burn patients may also face emotional and financial consequences. For example, if the burn patient is an infant or child, the parents may blame themselves for the incident. Additionally, burn injuries can be very expensive, sometimes costing families £200,000 in care. In the US, severe burn care typically exceeds $3,000 a day. Given that burns typically effect people who are low-income, this is an extreme burden. Fortunately, Chinenye taught us that burn injuries are extremely preventable, and the easiest way to prevent them is by education. Educating people on what cause burns and raising awareness about the dangers of burns is the best way to prevent people from getting burned. Additionally, teaching people how to care for burns is extremely helpful. We were shocked to learn some of the home remedies for burns that Chinenye has seen include raw eggs, butter, and toothpaste. These are bad remedies because they introduce microbes to the burn and may cause infection. Instead, the best thing to do is run the burn area under cool water for 20 minutes within the first three hours to stop the burning. After that, if the burn is larger than a coin, the patient should go to the hospital to receive treatment. In addition to burn prevention and initial care, Chinenye went over some basic information about how burns are treated in hospitals and burn centers. She taught us how to calculate surface area burns as a percentage, common fluid and topical treatments, and the importance of proper dressings for the wounds. Overall, the lecture was very interesting and educational.