Mission in Guyana

Misericordia University nursing students will soon get a hands-on experience that no classroom on the Dallas Township campus could offer, unless it came equipped with malaria-carrying mosquitoes and water that required boiling to be drinkable.

A group of eight students and two professors will head to the South American nation of Guyana at the end of the month as part of the international service-learning course, Global Health Issues in the Developing World. The one-credit course gives the student nurses a chance to interact with fellow nursing students and professionals for a week.

While the trip provides a break from Northeastern Pennsylvania’s winter, it won’t be a vacation.

They’ll have to boil their water, they’ll sleep under nets to keep mosquitoes and other insects away and they’ll work with more primitive medical equipment than they would in the United States.

The students are scheduled to conduct rounds with Guyanese students on the floors of St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital in Georgetown, and will provide support for mobile clinics and help treat indigent patients.

Dr. Brenda Hage, director of graduate nursing programs at Misericordia, has been to the developing nation five times before and said the nursing students and hospital medical staffs appreciate the help and educational opportunities. But it’s the residents of Georgetown and the surrounding villages that get the most from the collaboration.

She told students at a dinner Friday night that they’ll be greeted at daybreak by lines of people hoping to receive medical treatment at mobile clinics and churches. And she said some of the diseases the students will treat will be unlike anything they’ll see stateside.

Maura Gibbons, from Rockaway, N.J., said she’s looking forward to “expanding my horizons and seeing different cultures.”

Gibbons said the trip will likely “be an eye-opener” and will give her fellow students a chance to see “how people deliver care in places where technology doesn’t exist.”

The students will do more than offer medical care during the trip. Besides an excursion along the Essequibo River, visiting poor villages in the deep interior of the nation, the students will participate in a roundtable discussion with local officials and The Pan American World Health Organization. They’ll also meet with Ministry of Health officials in Georgetown.

The trip will cost students $1,200, something Erin Colby, from Forty Fort, didn’t bat an eyelash at when she found out it was being offered.

At the dinner, students noshed on traditional Guyanese food, including vegetables with curry, jerk chicken and plantain chips, as they asked Hage and Nursing Department Chairwoman Dr. Cynthia Mailloux questions and voiced their concerns about the trip. The group shared vaccination stories, easily rattling off the list of injections they’ve received – typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, tetanus and hepatitis.

Mailloux and Hage were asked by St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital officials to instruct classes at the hospital’s school of nursing on topics such as diabetes, asthma and HIV. The Misericordia students will learn side-by-side with their Guyanese colleagues.

Two Misericordia graduate students, Angela Evans, of Noxen, and Barbara Campagna, of Mountain Top, also will be teaching the undergrads.

“I’m hoping we can help them and mentor them,” Evans said. Evans said the field work may help her if she goes forward with plans to join Doctors Without Borders or Remote Area Medical, two organizations providing medical care in some of the world’s poorest nations.

Alicia Herr, of Montgomery, said she too might be interested in serving as a nurse in third-world nations and looks forward to seeing how less fortunate nations go about offering health care and how medical professionals provide service in less-than-ideal conditions.

While education is at the heart of the trip, Mailloux said a key component is following the principles of the Sisters of Mercy, which founded Misericordia and with which the hospital is affiliated.

“Our nursing students will get to experience the cultural differences between the two countries,” Mailloux said, “and the differences between the health care system in the United States and a developing country. But more importantly, it will plant an important seed that may lead to them caring for the less fortunate in our country or another country throughout their careers.”

As part of that mission, the Misericordia delegation will bring donated medical supplies to the hospital. And thanks to donations raised by Evans through the Sweet Valley Church of Christ, the envoys will bring 25 stethoscopes, one for each of the nursing students about to graduate from the St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital School of Nursing.

In addition to Campagna, Evans, Colby, Gibbons and Herr, other students going on the trip are Marianne Karalunas of Wyoming, Deb Morris of Bloomsburg and Brittany Schorr of Hydes, Md.

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Want to donate?

The students will be blogging about their experiences while in Guyana. Visit http://greetingsfromguyana.blogspot.com to read about their daily activities.

The Misericordia nursing group has been asked by the hospital in Guyana to bring along a variety of medical items that have been posted on a wish list at http://www.mercy.hospital.org.gy/wish_list.html. If you can donate any of the items before Feb. 27, contact Dr. Brenda Hage at 674-6760.