LTC students gain life experience

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This is interesting: LTC nursing students gain life experience | htrnews.com | Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter

Cathy McDaniel and Katie Mott are students at Lakeshore Technical College taking advanced anatomy and physiology and other classes in English.

But in July, the two nursing associate degree students experienced another language and culture for nearly 10 days.

"I'm going to take your pulse," Mott said to a reporter in Spanish.

"I am going to weigh you," said McDaniel, also using the language used by residents of Cuernavaca, a city of about one half-million people south of Mexico City.

That is where the two women attended the Cuauhnahuac Spanish Language Institute, giving them the opportunity for "total immersion" in the Mexican culture.

"I've always said I wanted to learn more about other cultures and, specifically, to learn more Spanish so I'd be able to better help my patients," said McDaniel, 33.

The Manitowoc resident worked at Jagemann Stamping as a press operator for about seven years. Now, she is in the fourth and final semester of her nursing studies at LTC. She works as a licensed practical nurse at the Hamilton Care Center in Two Rivers.

A Whitelaw resident, Mott also recognizes the growing Spanish-speaking population in the Lakeshore area and the advantages to a bilingual nurse in conducting health assessments.

She was a hairstylist for six years before completing the medical assistant program at LTC. Mott works as a diagnostic patient assistant drawing blood and helping perform electrocardiograms.

Moss said natives of Mexico are "very big into herbal medicine and try anything before seeing a doctor as a last resort. They will ask their family and friends' opinions first before going to a doctor's office," said Mott, who like McDaniel, stayed in host families' homes.

McDaniel said many Mexicans are fatalistic about their lifespan, with chosen lifestyle habits not seen as having much impact.

Both students found fascinating the role of a pharmacy in Mexican society. They said few drugs require prescription, except heavy doses of narcotics and the so-called "morning after" pill to prevent pregnancy.

But drugs like penicillin and Valium can be purchased over the counter.

Many larger pharmacies have a physician on site for consultation and writing prescriptions requiring a doctor's approval.

They found fascinating the different role of the Red Cross in Mexico. The organization does all the ambulance runs, not cities or private companies, and it has its own emergency services.

If Red Cross personnel can get the patient well enough to go home, he or she does, with no admission to a hospital, Moss said.

Mott and McDaniel said it appeared nursing is a respected profession in Mexico. Nurses go to school for five years, year-round, taking classes equivalent to those taken by LTC students. Their pay is equivalent to about $3.50 per hour.

Their visits to medical clinics revealed the use of modern technology comparable to the U.S.

It was a low-tech experience McDaniel said she'll always remember. The women performed massages on babies in an orphanage, often not getting much attention.

McDaniel said some of the children are in orphanages as a result of family abuse situations, while others with disabilities may have been given to the orphanage for long-term care.

Marilyn Kaufman, head of LTC's nursing department, is pleased Mott and McDaniel each took advantage of a $500 scholarship to help defray the $1,200 expense of the institute program.

Kaufman said the Mexico experience and others outside the U.S. "expand your horizons as a nurse. It makes you more sensitive to other cultures. There are a lot of ways to look at the world and they might all be just fine."

Away from their clinical experiences, the duo had time for a little sightseeing.

At open-air markets they saw meat hanging from hooks with no part of any animal going to waste.

"We each ate a bug … it tasted like cinnamon," Moss said.