Promoting health -and hope- in the Dominican Republic

Villanova, PA-June 16, 2009—It’s not a typical travel experience when you are so moved by a place and its people that you leave your spare money and clothes behind. But that is exactly what happened when five Villanova University College of Nursing students, faculty advisors and alumni departed Quisqueya, Dominican Republic in early March.

The Villanova Nursing group, there for the third consecutive year, travel to the bateyes (shanty towns) where Haitian immigrants have been enslaved by the sugarcane industry. These residents live in extreme poverty, where there is scant food, limited resources and negligible sanitation. The nurses spend a week promoting health through carefully crafted education plans they have developed after assessing the population and investigating the most critical public health problems there. They also assist with vital sign checks for those they meet. This experience is a global health and health promotion option as part of their academic curriculum.

Four of the students were from the undergraduate program; one –Meghan Murphy—is a 2006 baccalaureate nursing alumna who has returned to Villanova to earn her master’s degree and become a pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP). Accompanying the student group was Assistant Professor Debbie Wimmer and alumna Geri O’Hare-both PNPs with significant global health experience- and Venezla Nobbie who had the same experience last year as an accelerated second degree student earning her bachelor’s degree in nursing. She returned this year as a translator and mentor for the students.

Murphy was moved and energized by the experience, saying “We met parents and children who live with very limited resources; however, they remain hopeful and happy. I was reminded of the resilience that most children possess - another reason I love being a pediatric nurse.”

The students raised $200 prior to their experience; they donated vitamin and iron pills, permethrin cream for scabies, and made personal donations totaling $150 to assist in funding the local nutrition program that provides a basic daily meal. The team also donated an otoscope to “Dr. Tony,” a local family practitioner. He works with the mobile health clinic run by Sr. Concepcion, a Sister of Charity, who visits 36 bateyes around Quisqueya. The students visited some of these bateyes to assist with the efforts of the mobile clinic. They triaged and assessed patients alongside nurse practitioners and checked vital signs- a key effort because of an increase in hypertension in the area.

In an environment with so few resources, “The students showed such initiative,” said Wimmer. They devised albuterol inhaler spacers for asthma treatment from discarded plastic coke and water bottles. The students also ran a workshop for 19 health promoters from the area and gave lectures on various health topics. Wimmer identifies the poverty and malnutrition as “an eye opener “ for the students. Senior Jennifer Martin agrees, calling it a “perspective changing experience.” “Seeing the needs the people of the bateyes had, and how they couldn't be met, made what seemed troublesome in our lives quite trivial. It felt really good to be able to provide these people and their children with some much needed health care access,” she said. Martin completes her degree in July and already has future plans. “This experience has showed me the many things you can do with nursing and I want to do medical/nursing mission trips like this again in the future. “