For many students, the trip announcement was the first time they had heard of Micronesia, but that didn’t stop them from jumping at the chance to go and help the people there.
Micronesia is a region made up of more than 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean, around 2,500 miles east of the Philippines and 1,000 miles northeast of Papua New Guinea. The trip was organized with help from MAHI International, and the students were joined by nurse consultant Kristi Libby, who previously helped on last year’s Peru trip.
The students on this trip had a unique opportunity to work in a Micronesian hospital side-by-side with the staff there. Split up into smaller groups, students spent two days floating between different units of the hospital, including the emergency room, the operating room, medical-surgical unit and labor and delivery. Although the hospital lacked the resources students have gotten used to in U.S. hospitals, it had a team of doctors and nurses working together in a way that inspired them.
“They’re always there for each other,” Kaur said. “They would get so excited when our group would go to the hospital. They welcomed us as a family; we didn’t feel like we were any different. They were very welcoming and taught us so much about their health care system.”
Much of what the students saw at the hospital was tough for them to take in, like amputations done while a patient was awake. On the second day at the hospital, a patient came in suffering a cardiac arrest. Two students were working in the ER and took the lead when the local hospital team wasn’t sure what to do. Kaur and her classmate, both of whom had been working nearby in triage, ran in to assist. The patient ended up dying when the family called off further resuscitation efforts.
The experience shook the students but led to important conversations.
“It raised a lot of really good questions about the difference in cultures and the difference in how we see death,” Ball said, mentioning how in the U.S. death is often seen as a failure but in other cultures it’s seen as a natural process. “We view it differently here, but it doesn’t mean one is right or wrong. It just means they’re different, and it’s OK that they’re different.”
Kaur said a death was not something she expected to happen on the trip but that she was grateful to have friends there to talk to about it. Outside of lab simulations, Kaur had never dealt with a “code blue” before, but said she knew what to do from all the practice. The experience also made her reconsider a limitation she’d previously put on herself.
“At one point, I was thinking about going into ER, but then I thought, ‘Will I be able to function in that much chaos?’” said Kaur, who is also considering becoming a labor and delivery nurse. “But going through that situation in Micronesia, I was so surprised how I acted. So quickly I just took over the role that was assigned and did it. I was like ‘Oh, I can do it.’ I remained so calm and collected that I know I can handle the situation.”
Like the students who went to Costa Rica, the Micronesia team also did health screenings for patients. The remote islands they visited for two days of outreach were accessible only by boat, and they had to hike through the jungle to get to the villages. These visits taught students about the barriers some patients have to health care.
“We make assumptions when patients are not compliant with care that they don’t care about taking care of themselves,” Ball said. “Well, when my students saw, ‘Oh my gosh, in order to go to the doctor, they have to take a boat and they have to hike through the jungle and then they have to get to the hospital. No wonder they have trouble seeing a medical professional!’”
Ball knows the lessons students learned on both trips will make them better nurses back at home. Like the patients they saw in Micronesia or Costa Rica, patients here might also have transportation or financial challenges preventing them from following through with treatment plans, or different perspectives on health issues that could impact their lifestyles.
“It’s very important for us to understand and respect different cultures, because we’re going to be treating patients coming from all different races, cultures, religions,” Kaur said. “I feel like I’m very fortunate that I got to experience this outreach. It just grounds you and teaches you how to take care of them while being respectful to their needs and respecting their point of view.”
The Micronesia group saw 504 patients, just over their goal of 500. They celebrated a job well done with a trip to the Nan Madol ruins on Pohnpei, snorkeling and waterfall hikes.