Today we spent a lot of time at the college being able to hear from many different people! First, we got to talk to Dr. Sar Zarti about public health in the UK. She started her career as a medical doctor, then swithed to public health later in her career. She said that the switch from medicine to public health requires you to take 2 steps back and look at patients as a whole, including their community, jobs, family, and more instead of focusing just on figuring out what their diagnosis is. In the UK, their public health department has 6 divisions, one of those being a set office for health disparities, which I found interesting. They also have a bunch of projects in place with the goal of improving the overall health of the population. They also put a large emphasis on non-physical health as well, which I think is very important because mental health is just as important as your physical health. One thing that stood out that was different. between the US and UK was that their policies are almost always nationwide, while in the US they can differ state to state. I think having a more unified system is benificial to all of the people living there since it creates less gaps based on where you can live.
Next, we got to talk to a few midwives and their students. Since midwives are not very common in the US, I found this very interesting to talk about. In the UK, midwives are their own autonomous practitioners and do not have to be nurses to start this career. In the US, they have to be nurses before you can go back and get your masters to be a midwife. Their main role is to provide support to both mom and the baby throughout the whole pregnancy and after birth for a few weeks. They want to focus on woman-centered care, allowing the patient to make all of the decisions for themself, even if it may possibly harm them or the fetus. In the UK, fetuses do not have any rights until they are born and take their first breath, so if the woman refuses a C-section knowing it will put her or the baby at risk that is her decision and it is respected. Along with this, they are allowed to have an abortion at any time during their pregnancy. It is reccomended to be done before 12 weeks, but if mom or baby is at risk they can get it done at any time if 2 providers sign off. Overall, having midwives present during pregnacy and the birthing process overall improves outcomes and satisfaction due to the continuity of care all throughout the entire 9 months.
Next, we got to talk to Jonathan Gadsby about mental health nursing in the UK. This is one of the 4 specialties you have to pick from when choosing to go to nursing school. He talked about his experiences as a mental health nurse and the many struggles that come with it. When he first started, he had a lot of questions about the methods and practices used to treat mental health patients, which he said were very common for nurses working in this field since there are so many different things to take in. One of his biggest focuses within mental health was working with people who experienced auditory hallucinations through the Hearing Voices Movement. This group allowed people experiencing these halllucinations to have an outlet to share their experiences and what what worked for them to help eachother make sense of everything and feel less alone. He really found this fascinating and it ended up being the focus of both his masters degree and PHD. One of my biggest takeaway from his talk was about empathy. How I thought of empathy before was being able to put yourself into others shoes, but that is only part of it. Empathy is being able to understand other people in their own shoes, and not making it about yourself and your feelings. As a nurse, this trait is extremely important because you are working with people going through some of the worst moments in their life, and you can not relate to them. I felt as though this really stuck with me and by better understanding this, it will make me a better nurse in the future.
After these lectures, we went on a black heritage walk led by Marcia. We were able to see many different parts of Birmingham and learn how it relates to the history of the city. I really appreciated how Marcia talked about all the aspects of the history and not skipping over any parts. She really strongly believes that all monuments and statues should be kept and maintained, even if they represent negative people or ideas because it was a part of history and acting like it did not happen does not benefit future generations. She was extremely passionate and knowledgable about everything she spoke about and it definitely made the walk much more interesting and engaging hearing it from such an unbiased, accurate source.
After our lectures for the day, we ended our day by eating dinner at Jamaya, a jamaican resturaunt not far from the hotel. Then, we headed back to the hotel and had a nice relaxing night just hanging out and talking, before going to bed!
