Today was filled with a lot of lectures. To start off the day, we had Public health in the uk. I enjoyed this lesson more than I thought I would and actually found a lot of intrest in it. There are three main parts of Public Health: 1. Promotion 2. Protection 3. Prevention. The promotion category involved inequalities and healthy lifestyles. The protection category includes all environmental hazards and lastly prevention is the steps to prevent hospitalization. For the uk specificaly, the public health system involves NHS, OHID, UKHSA, NHS Trusts & PCNs, local authorities and third sector.
Next lesson was all about being a midwife in the uk. This was my favorite lesson we learned today because it gave me another possible avenue to go down. I could see myself doing more of a labor and delivery nurse than a midwife due to the extra schooling needed in the US. Some interesting attributes of being a midwife included, the fact that you don’t need to be a nurse first, can do home births, can attend births without a doctor present, act as a autonomous practitioner, regulated by NMC, helps in the postnatal period and lastly is extremely woman-centered. I loved the ladies that were presenting and just the energy they brought to their presentation. A random fact I also learned was that breast feeding helps prevent breast cancer?? I’m going to have to look into that one, but I was very fascinated when this got brought up.
The last formal lecture was all about mental health. This lecture was more of a personal experience structure than a break down of what it’s like working as a nurse on this floor/ward. Something specific he stated was “Insitulationalisation means the loss of ones self”. I thought this was a very insightful way of viewing life and began to think a lot deeper into this subject.
After the lectures concluded, we had a tour and a deep dive of the history of some important structures around the city of Birmingham. Our tour guide, Marcia, was very educated and provided backroung information to best explain all of her topics. Her energy was very electric and I loved getting to know her more.
We tried Jamaican food for dinner tonight, and I liked my food way more than I originally thought I would. It was a simple chicken tender plate with a little bit of spice. While spicy foods arn’t my thing I did finish my entire plate. Before leaving I ordered some cheesecake that had a mango filling in it. I wish I just got the orinigal cheesecake but am happy I at least tried it.
After finishing dinner, I went with a little group to go to a cute icecream place near by. While I personally didn’t get any I did try everyone’s that would let me. It was so much fun and I’m happy that we plan to continue to find new things to do while we are here.
P.S I will be trying these macarons one day, they looked so aesthically pleasing.