COUNTRY: Vietnam
PROGRAM: UniBreak Groups
PROJECT: Notre Dame Nursing Placement
WRITTEN BY: Isabel Cullen, Notre Dame University
We’ve been back in Australia for a week now and it almost seems like it was all a dream! Life has returned to normal, well as normal as anyone’s life can be, mine for one does not fit into most people’s definition of normal, but it has continued on in its own unique way with the next adventure. Today is the first day of our next prac, but we are all in different places, our group separated and we’re all now on our own preparing to face what today will bring.
This time I am in Kalgoorlie, warming myself up to my new home away from home. I am once again away from the city and although it is different to Perth, it is still Australia and, therefore, hugely different to Vietnam. Our experience in Vietnam was very unique and a rare opportunity for anybody. To see the side of Vietnam away from the prying eyes of tourists and to be welcomed by the locals with such joy and gratitude really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
We’ve witnessed the way the Vietnamese people actually live and now better understand how their lives flow and how their country functions, rather than simply what they put on show for the tourists. It’s hard to know everything we’ve learnt as the information is still processing and often you don’t realise what you’ve learnt until you apply it again. The most important aspect of our trip was not the assistance we provided to the local people. Yes, that was a big part of it, but the main point of our trip was the learning experience for us. That’s what makes the biggest difference and that’s what this next prac is all about.
Getting back and applying the skills and knowledge we have gained from such an exceptional opportunity. We have had the chance to provide health care to people in remote areas of a developing country. Through this we developed our health assessment skills intensely and, therefore, also grew in confidence. But we didn’t only learn physical skills. We also learnt how to work through one, and sometimes two, interpreters. We learnt patience and we developed further our empathy and ability to care. We learnt how to problem solve and critically assess a situation to provide the best care we had available as we came to terms with our lack of resources.
We learnt to accept people’s own healthcare decisions, despite our better judgement; and we learnt to let go when we realised there was nothing more we could do and all we could really provide was some tiger balm and a smile. Showing you care goes a long way, sometimes all people need is someone to listen to them and acknowledge that they are a person living and struggling in this world. Doing this can make someone’s day a little bit better and you never know the impact that could have on their life.
That and reinforcing basic health education is what I feel made the biggest difference to the local people. The challenge for us as nursing students now is to take all we have learnt and apply it to everything we do back home because in the long run it is going to make us better nurses. We were thrown into a situation where we were forced to apply our skills and now have stronger skills sets as a result of it. We must strive to not forget them and to constantly apply it to our nursing. Everybody is worth our time and our care and we must remember this as we return to the hustle and bustle of our busy hospitals. And I’m sure we all will ☺
How this trip will affect our careers, well I don’t know exactly, but it can only be positive. This is something that sets us apart from the others and with the competitiveness of getting a grad program or a job these days we need every edge we can get. But we have not only grown as nurses, and regardless of where our careers may take us, we have all grown as people and this is probably the biggest difference to us personally. We are all individuals and all had a unique experience, but we all grew within ourselves in our own way and to a different degree.
We all came back with a slightly different perspective and learning from this is what makes the whole trip worthwhile. For those who hadn’t travelled before, there’s the understanding that the world is much bigger than Perth and that we are very lucky to be born into the lives we have. For myself, this trip reinforced that the world is full of beautiful people and that we aren’t that different at the end of the day. As our lives progress and we continue on our own journeys we can all look back on this experience and smile ☺
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