Global Perspectives in Health summer travel program

Fort Worth, TX

9/25/2008

By: Hannah Mathews, Office of Communications

Each year, students from TCU travel the world in study abroad programs, and nursing students are no exception. A course offered in London called Global Perspectives in Health gives TCU students the opportunity to explore similarities and differences between healthcare systems in the U.K. and U.S. both historically and currently.

The program attracts students, not only in the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences, but also from all majors. Dr. Diane Hawley and Professor Susan Weeks offer the course every other summer.

“Although the course has a nursing prefix,” nursing faculty Susan Weeks explained, “there were a variety of majors represented in the students enrolled last summer.”

The group of 25 students included political science, broadcast journalism, education and business majors, as well as the nursing students.

Global Perspectives in Health is taught at various sites in and around London. Students explore places such as the Tower of London, the Florence Nightingale Museum, Stratford upon Avon, St. Thomas Hospital and University of Greenwich to discover how those places have shaped the healthcare system in the U.K. Students also explore rural healthcare issues at Oxford and Windsor, which lie just outside of London, and compared those issues to that of urban and U.S. healthcare.

Students discover that although the healthcare systems appear very different on the surface, there are similar problems being faced by both healthcare systems. Issues in patient safety, quality and shortages of health care professionals, especially nurses, are prevalent in both systems. The most significant problem for both systems is how to ration the limited human and financial resources available to provide health care for their citizens. By traveling abroad, students experience firsthand what they learn in the classroom, as well as discovering more about themselves while traveling.

“The students are always amazed by how much they have learned about themselves, and the ways they have learned to be more confident and more competent in dealing with the challenges that are inherent in traveling to another country,” Weeks explained.

Although seeing the growth and development of the students is important to Weeks, her favorite part of the trip is always the final day when students participate in group debates on various course topics.

“It is always gratifying and amazing to realize just how much the students have learned from experiencing another culture,” Weeks explained.

Weeks hopes to be able to travel with students again in the future on study abroad programs.

"TCU has dedicated significant resources to increasing the study abroad opportunities available for students," Weeks said. "There are some exciting new options that are being developed that will continue to promote study abroad for TCU students."