Nursing sends students to Thailand

A group of Nursing students was given the opportunity to see how their future profession operates in a different culture -- one with far fewer resources and many more challenges than the one to which they are accustomed.

For the first time, Penn students were given the opportunity last spring to study at hospitals and a medical school in Bangkok, Thailand.

"The trip is transformational -- it makes you view yourself in a different way," Nursing Professor Linda Brown said. "Our western culture has a lot of good things, but there are a lot of things we can learn."

With the help of an old friend and nursing colleague Usavadee Asdornwised -- also a nursing faculty member at Mahidol University, where the students resided during their time abroad -- Brown incorporated a three-week trip to Thailand into an already existing course at the Nursing School entitled Comparative Health Care Systems.

During the 10-day course -- the last week is devoted to travel and relaxation -- students learn about health care in Thailand by visiting public and private hospitals, factories and alternative therapy providers.

"Touring hospitals there gave a unique peek into a different health care system, one that does its best with limited resources and with unique health needs of its population, for instance, the high rate of HIV and AIDS [and] drug use," Nursing graduate student Carla Huesgen wrote in an e-mail.

Not only did Brown want her students to learn about nursing and health care practices in Thailand, but also to understand the Thai culture and society.

"One of the things very important to me is the whole complexity that surrounds the issue of culture," Brown said. "How one relates to an individual while maintaining a level of understanding and respect for that individual's culture and getting to understand that the human condition is universal."

In addition to hearing some prominent figures in the health care system speak, such as the president of the Thai Nursing Council, students were able to meet and talk with many Thai nurses and physicians.

One of the major differences between health care in the U.S. and Thailand that students were able to observe was the drastic difference in hospital environments.

"I remember an outpatient clinic where there must have been 200 patients waiting to be seen sitting on rows of benches in a large un-air-conditioned atrium, yet no one was complaining and everything seemed very organized and orderly," Nursing senior Betsy White wrote in an e-mail. "It seemed like a much more therapeutic setting."

And Huesgen took other lessons from the trip.

"We could benefit from the gentle nature of the Thai people which is very much reflected in the hospitals and in their lifestyles," Huesgen reflected. "The Thai people have definitely maintained a 'humanness' to their hospitals that we have lost amidst technology and our approach to medicine and healing."

However, Huesgen also likened the status of the nursing profession in Thailand to what nursing was like in the U.S. during the 1950s -- "before nurses were educated and socialized to be critical thinkers."

"I realized now how new the status of nursing as a profession is and seeing how far it has come in this past century makes me realize the vast potential for where it can go in my lifetime," Huesgen wrote.

And Thai nurse and former nursing student of Asdornwised , Shalintara Agadmeck wrote she hopes that the program will help improve nursing both in Thailand and the U.S.

"We are the same, but learning [the] differences for each individual could help us focus on the patients' needs or patient care," Agadmeck wrote in an e-mail.

Overall, all parties seemed to gain new ideas and approaches to nursing from the program.

"It was an amazing and incredibly enriching experience. I think [it] reinforced that there are other ways to practice health care in the world. It also made me realize the immense value of international comparison and collaboration in nursing," White said.

This coming spring, Boston College nursing undergraduate and graduate students will participate in the program as well. And although there is a significant monetary gap between the two countries -- which does not allow Thai students to come to the U.S. -- Brown said she hopes to work out a way for them to visit Penn in the near future.

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