This summer, more than 30 students and faculty from Emory's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing will embark on a two-week immersion experience at five sites around the world — the City of Refuge in Atlanta, Moultrie, Ga., West Virginia, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.  

From June 10 to 23, accelerated BSN (ABSN) program students will work with local health care providers and community partners to provide health care, community assessments, program evaluations and a sustainability project in each location.  

"Service learning has long been a pillar of Emory's School of Nursing," says Linda McCauley, dean and professor, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. "Service learning trips teach students more than just clinical care. They offer nursing students the opportunity to develop respect for unfamiliar cultures while facing real-world health care challenges such as working with interpreters and facing medical supply shortages."  

City Of Refuge

At the City of Refuge in Atlanta, students are working in the HEALing Community Center, a community clinic that provides health care and various resources to Atlanta's homeless population. During their time at the City of Refuge, nursing students are focusing on the maternal-child homeless population and interacting with more than 500 patients and residents of Eden Village at the City of Refuge, which also serves as transitional housing for mothers and their children. The HEALing Community Center provides primary care and outpatient surgery to patients who might not otherwise have access to medical care.  

Moultrie, Ga.

Just four hours from Atlanta in Moultrie, Ga., another team of nursing students is spending two weeks caring for farm workers and their families. The Migrant Farm Worker Family Health Program has allowed Emory nursing students to provide critical nursing care to more than 15,000 people. The nursing students will examine children by day and set up mobile clinics to treat adult farm workers in the evening, while evaluating the impact the program has had on the community since its inception in 1994.  

West Virginia

For the second year, nursing students and faculty will be traveling to West Virginia to partner with Cabin Creek Health System. Students will evaluate how well the health system's Medicaid disabled population's mental health needs are being met. They will see patients in clinics and in their homes, asking them about their mental health needs and issues that drive patients to use other sources of care such as emergency departments and urgent care centers.  

Bahamas

For ten years Emory School of Nursing has partnered with local organizations on the small island of Eleuthera and with the Bahamian Ministry of Health to support Eleuthera in its campaign to encourage healthy lifestyles. Emory nursing students will interact with Eleutheran leaders and residents to learn what  the communities view as priorities for their health, assess strengths and areas for  growth, and suggest ways to support local efforts. The student nurses also will work with local nurses to assist in their care of clinic patients, and will offer health education for primary and secondary school students.    

Dominican Republic

In the Dominican Republic, Emory is partnering with two programs in Hospital San Vincente de Paul's in San Francisco de Macoris. Students will evaluate the volunteer doula program and update the data collection tool of the Kangaroo Mother Care project, a method of caring for premature infants that involves constant skin to skin contact in place of an incubator. Infants who might otherwise spend their first days or weeks in an incubator are now with their mothers 24/7. Additionally students will visit hospitals at the provincial periphery and observe the workings of the referral system within the public health infrastructure.  

"No matter where the travel to, we often hear that opportunities like this take both our students and faculty back to the start of why they wanted to become nurses,"says Corrine Abraham, a nursing instructor and the International Academic and Cultural Exchange Coordinator at Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. "They not only enhance their clinical capabilities, but they also sharpen their caring skills, which are the heart of our field.”