Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, built between AD 2 and 200.
Pilgrims at Basilica de Guadalupe, site of miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary.
Water sculpture of Tlaloc, god of rain and water, in Chapultepec Park |
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Student exchange program opens insight to Mexico
Jeanine Hanohano always wanted to travel as a nurse. For one month this past summer, she didn’t get a “vacation,” she got a new perspective on medicine and culture.
Hanohano was one of three students who participated in the Texas Woman’s University College of Nursing exchange program in collaboration with the Universidad Panamericana (UPE). Another four students came through an internship program with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The program, which sent its first contingent in 2002, allows students from Mexico to study in Houston, and sends U.S. students to study in Mexico City and San José de Toshi, about 75 miles from the capital city.
Mexico City is a mesmerizing destination where, in the words of a Lonely Planet guide, “the altitude’s not the only thing that will make your head spin,” with such memorable sites as of the Pyramid of the Sun in nearby Teotihuacan, the Basilica de Guadalupe, and the water sculpture of Tláloc in Chapultepec Park.
But for all of Mexico City’s beauty, Hanohano and her fellow students, were attracted by something deeper -- the chance to learn the culture, the language and hone their nursing skills.
“I got to do more things as a student over there than I ever could in the U.S.,” says Hanohano, 26, who already holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and hopes to graduate from Texas Woman’s nursing school this December.
The first two weeks in Mexico City, where students stay at family homes, they gain experiences in such areas as neonatal intensive care, labor and delivery, and women’s healthcare at both the private Hospital Español, and the nurse-run CIMIGEN hospital for pregnant women and children.
The students also participate in cultural tours of the area and each evening receive two hours of language instruction “focusing on conversational Spanish that emphasizes medical terminology and health assessment interviewing,” according to a website article (http://www.nursingsociety.org/RNL/Current/features/feature3.html) by Ruth Grubesic, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of International Nursing Affairs at Texas Woman’s University in Houston.
The last two weeks are spent in Toshi, home to the Mazahua and Otomié indigenous communities, where students find that the rural setting allows nurses to play a bigger role.
“You’re expected to do much more,” says Hanohano, who adds that the patients seem to hold the nurses in higher regard than in the U.S., respecting them near or “as much as a doctor.”
Hanohano recalls several incidents that particularly touched her, including encounters with an 11-year-old boy on a waiting list for a kidney transplant and the approaching death of a 70-year-old woman who had little in the way of pain medications.
But it was one encounter that led her to reflect on her real purpose for the trip.
“One of the patients at the clinic asked me why I am helping people in Mexico rather than helping people in the United States,” said Hanohano, who has set “community health” as one of her personal goals. “I told him it was mostly that I need to know about other people’s cultures … anyone feels more comfortable when they can express themselves in their own language.”
The sense of what it’s like to be in someone else’s country and not have a mastery of the language or familiarity with the culture translates to the students, who get a glimpse of what foreign-born residents experience in the U.S.
“They come back and their eyes are wide open,” says Grubesic, “and they know what it’s like to be on the other side … to not understand everything that is going on … someone is speaking to them in a foreign language, and yes we have an interpreter, but there’s all kinds of things happening and they aren’t sure what is going on.
“So these students,” Grubesic says, “become nurses who understand.”
Anita Fitzgerald is a bilingual nurse practitioner and a nursing instructor in the Los Angeles area.
Su Conexión*
Texas Women’s University College of Nursing student exchange program with Universidad Panamericana: www.nursingsociety.org/RNL/Current/features/feature3.html
Medical clinic in San José de Toshi: www.opusdei.us/art.php?p=6290
* All links are provided for informational reasons only; inclusion on this list does not imply endorsement of these organizations, their philosophies or their sponsors.
