Sjuksköterskestudenter utomlands

My 5 weeks of clinical rotation are soon turning to an end. Today I will do my last day at the hospital MCCG (The Medical Center of Central Georgia) in Macon. There have been a lot of good bad also bad experiences. Though this is my second time doing a clinical rotation outside of Sweden I feel that this is normal, because the health-systems work different and different countries have different issues.

When it comes to obesity I haven’t actually seen so many obese people, more obese children. But when children are obese, they aren’t as obese as grown ups can be. Some of the students told me that it does not need much weight for a child to be obese, but it does for a grown up person. So I think the issue here is mainly children that have fast-food and a lot of sugar in different drinks. The typical drink in Georgia is sweetened-tea. It is tea that is boiled and than they put in a lot of sugar. After that it is served with a lot of cold ice. There is also a good lemonade that is typically for Georgia or you could mix both the tea and the lemonade to get a 50/50. But, there do serve unsweetened tea as well, which I am totally fine with drinking. And everybody drinks it with a plastic-straw. In a styrofoam-cup. From what I experienced here a lot of plastic-dishes are used here, instead of washing dishes. Even at the hospital everything that is used in patient care is basically one-way used. So a lot of plastic. Even the spoon, forks and knives are made in plastic and single-packed in plastic.

Fresh Donut after a long day of clinical at the hospital 🙂

When it comes to the patient care I see that the nursing-education is very anatomy- and physiology-focused. When I look at how the nurses work though, they do work a lot more with caring-sience, which is not much educated in school, from what I understood from the students. This is the total reverse from Sweden, where the nurse is the expert in caring-sience and the physician (doctor) is the expert in the medical field. I also saw that they use restrainment-orders on arms and legs for patients that are bed-bund and are in need of intensive-care. I recognize this from Vienna in Austria where this also was used for patients awakening from anesthesia from an organ-transplantation. It may seem strange for a Sweden like me, because this is not used in Sweden and totally banned. At the ICU in Kalmar they have nurses (LPN) who sit and wait on the patients, just holding down their hands if they try to fight the tube in their throat. I have been discussing this treatment with nurses in Austria, Sweden and the U.S. and I found that there are advantages and disadvantages. It is easier to work with restrained patients, but it is also a restrainment of one others life. I think here in terms of that another person must feel trapped while awakening, but is it better to hold down the hands and legs by e person? It probably is, yes. But it also needs a lot more staff and people who watch their patients 24/7, every minute of the shift. And after my summer at the ICU working 3-shift, I can tell that it is a HARD job!

Nursing-station in the hall-way at the pediatric-ward.

This clinical rotation was supposed to be a 5-week rotation in the community. With a community nurse. It turned out not to be exactly like that. I was the first student from Linneaus university to visit GCSU. There have been several students in Växjö at LNU’s campus, but none has gone over to the U.S. from my university. I have had issues with getting to places of my clinical rotations (everything is far away here, but thanks to ALL the WONDERFUL nursing-students I could get my way to all the rotations with them. I did organize a lot of those trips by myself and my roommate Anna which also is a nursing student. I think that 5 weeks is to short to come over to the U.S. for a clinical rotation, because there are a lot of preparations that have to be done while in the States. Their law HIPPA is for the patients safety and confidentiality and is hard regulated. I also heard that nurses have to prove their registration (legitimation in swedish) every other year at a board, so they still have the knowledge for their work. This law makes it hard to just get to a clinical rotation, especially because I am not American.

Treatment-room for children.

It has been of huge help to live with Anna, Jennie and Beth. They helped me with a lot of questions and also allowed me to borrow their cars, which made it easy for me to shop groceries and get to barns where I spend some of my free-time riding. To live with local people is a easy way to get closer to the community and I think the whole travel mainly gave me a grate cultural experience.

Cars for children at the ward.

Now the time has come for me to take some vacation. Since I have made all my time for my clinicals and I got signed all my papers, I will leave for Miami on Sunday. I booked a flight yesterday and I hope that I might even make it for a Cruise to the Caribbean. I still don’t know, but there are also other option, e.g. the network called “Air bnb”, which is a homepage where people rent their apartments for a good price. It also gives you the opportunity to meet local people. I plan on grabbing my bags and leaving them at the airport in Atlanta. I will than only travel with my backpack to Florida and later next week return to Atlanta for my final flight home.

I hope you had a great time reading my blog, I will return with some vacation pictures though.

Georgia is a State well known for casting movies. “Forrest Gump” and “Fried Green Tomatoes” are two movies recorded in Georgia. Anna and I went to “The Whistle Stop Café” which was build for the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes” and we had food with fried green tomatoes which was delicious. Even though the place is simple, it has outstanding food and is situated in a neat surrounding. And of course it looks just like in the movie! A special thank you to Anna Agyao, without here all this has not been possible!

See ya later!