Claire Cardillo
Nursing Student
University of Florida
CLINICAL EXPERIENCES ABROAD
Technology and Research
We are blessed with not only fancy equipment, but also simple things such as masks, isolation rooms, and an abundance of gloves and hand sanitizer. I realized that I learned way more about our procedures than I thought I did, because I was able to recognize the things they did differently than us and identify how we would have done it back in America. I also found myself wondering about the research aspect of things. When I think about research in America, it feels that we are so far advanced that research on what type of patient care/procedures work is very specific at this point, which is a good thing. However, in Grenada it would be interesting to see if implementing something as simple as more hand sanitizer or gloves would reduce rates of infections or hospital re-admittances.
Patient Experience
Something that really struck me about the entire hospital experience was the fact that it was less lonely than the American version. In America, everyone is in separate rooms and rarely interacts with other patients, especially those in isolation. However, in Grenada everyone is in one room and constantly talking, interacting, and just being around each other. This makes the hospital experience overall less lonely. It also helps the patients who are a little down to interact with other more positive people and hopefully gain some happiness from that. The patients were looking out for each other as well, by asking the nurses about different meds and telling them about any relevant conversations that they had with a patient in the bed next to them. Another thing that was special was the patient and nurse interaction. Often in America, we can get so caught up in procedure and not doing things “wrong” that we lose sight of what is most important: patient care. Although it is essential to follow our protocols (because they are put in place for the safety of the patients and the nurses), it is vital that we do not forget the aspects of simply talking with the patient and doing things such as comforting them with touch or a kind word.
Lessons Learned
Lastly, this experience made me realize the importance of knowing the basics. Although machines will alert us when a patient is in distress, we should try to monitor and assess them so they never even get to that point, much as we would if we did not have the machines in place. We are also very lucky to have many nurses to staff our units. Here, it was usually one or two nurses to the unit, and they were not afraid to go to “someone else’s patient” to help them if they needed anything. I thought this was something valuable to take back to America as well. We should focus less on which patients were are “assigned” to and strive to see every person in the hospital as someone we can potentially help and heal.