{"id":117110,"date":"2019-11-13T08:56:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=117110"},"modified":"2019-12-28T14:15:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T21:15:01","slug":"nursing-internship-in-nepal-inspires-dreams-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=117110","title":{"rendered":"Nursing internship in Nepal inspires dreams for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Adrianne Thompson ’19 (center) with the NICU staff at Kathmandu, Nepal’s largest teaching hospital.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The summer before her senior year, nursing major Adrianne Thompson \u201919 completed an internship abroad, immersed herself into a new healthcare system and ticked \u201cvisit a new country\u201d off her to-do list \u2013 all in four weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson spent the month in Kathmandu, Nepal working with\nnewborns in the capital\u2019s largest teaching hospital. Along the way, she fell in\nlove with the NICU \u2013 the neonatal intensive care unit \u2013 and made friendships\nthat have lasted even across oceans and time zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to take the summer to get a preview of the clinicals I would be doing my senior year at UCCS,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cI knew I wanted to work in the NICU and experience midwifery and delivery, so I was looking at nursing internships abroad that focused on those areas. That\u2019s how I came across Work the World.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Thompson shadowing a Nepali nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Work the World is a Great Britain-based organization that plans, organizes and oversees healthcare internships in the developing world for both students and graduates. Because Thompson wanted to focus on newborn care, the organization recommended an internship placement in either Takoradi, Ghana or Kathmandu, Nepal \u2013 both in hospitals with extensive NICU that see a high volume of births. Thompson picked Nepal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went to the biggest teaching hospital in the capital,\u201d\nshe said. \u201cIt was a go-to area for everything, including teaching students from\nall over the world. There were a lot of births, so I was happy about that. I\nspent two weeks in pediatrics, within that area I visited the PICU\u201d \u2013 the pediatric\nintensive care unit \u2013 \u201cthe NICU and general pediatric populations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She continued, \u201cI fell in love with the NICU. I made a lot\nof friends with the nurses there. I was only supposed to be there for three\ndays, and I was there for ten. I didn\u2019t want to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson spent her ten days in the NICU learning techniques to care for mothers and newborns, focusing especially on infant care in a resource-scarce environment. She shadowed nurses as they taught new mothers how to breastfeed, learned how to hold premature infants and practiced starting an IV on an infant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne baby had a cyst growing on his liver, and it was so massive that it was causing his stomach to swell under the pressure,\u201d Thompson recalled. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t eat anything by mouth. He was a really miserable baby, and it was heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Thompson in the home she shared with other Work the World interns.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA couple of days after his birth, he went to surgery and\nthe cyst was removed. The next time I saw him, he was drinking milk properly\nand the swelling in his stomach had gone down significantly. He was an absolute\ndelight to take care of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A highlight of the experience was the close bonds Thompson\ndeveloped with the nurses she worked with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe nurses went out of their ways to create opportunities\nfor me to learn,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I was working in obstetrics, I got to see five\nC-sections, one of which included the birth of twins. I saw at least a dozen\nnatural births.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She assisted in the births when the nurses needed an extra\nhands, but recalls her days in the nursery with the infants most fondly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Thompson brought a card and gifts to each of the units she interned with. “They would always let me eat first, even though I brought the gift for them,” she said.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was mostly there to observe and see what their practice\nwas,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver there, their care is a bit colder than it is here in the US. They\u2019re not very lovey or touchy with newborns. When the babies would cry, [the nurses] would let them cry. It was very strange for them to see me cuddle or talk to babies, because I would go from baby to baby in the nursery and talk to them and calm them down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn my last day in the nursery,\u201d Thompson said, \u201cone of the\nnurses that I\u2019d been working with sang a lullaby to a baby to calm him down. She\nposted on Facebook saying goodbye to me, and she wrote, \u2018While you were\nlearning from us, we were learning from you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt touched my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from UCCS in 2019 with her bachelor\u2019s in\nnursing, Thompson began work at the NICU at Children\u2019s Hospital in Colorado\nSprings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019ll begin graduate school in January to earn her master\u2019s\nin healthcare administration. After earning her degree, Thompson wants to spend\nseven or eight years getting hands-on NICU experience under her belt before\nmoving to labor and delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after that? She dreams of opening her own hospital in a\ndeveloping country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of work ahead of me, but I think I\u2019m up to the task,\u201d she said. \u201cMy experience in Nepal really opened my eyes as far as what could be done in healthcare in other countries. The hospital that I want to found, I want it to focus on high-risk pregnancies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Thompson holding a newborn with a Nepali NICU nurse.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Thompson shared that during her time in Nepal, nurses\nstruggled to deal with \u201cmultiples\u201d \u2013 pregnancies with multiple complicating factors,\nsuch as the birth of twins or mothers with preeclampsia or diabetes \u2013 all while\nworking with vastly fewer resources than hospitals in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She hopes that by opening her own hospital, she could help\nmake pregnancies safer for both mothers and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before that, she has years of experience to gain \u2013 and she doesn\u2019t\nfeel like her experiences need to be limited to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI definitely want to go back to Nepal,\u201d she said. \u201cThe director of the pediatric department basically adopted me. She told me, \u2018As long as I work here, you have a job here if you want it.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Thompson still stays in touch with the nurses she worked with, even across oceans and time zones.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really happy with the connections that I made,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cI met such good people. Once they accept you, you\u2019re as good as gold to them. You\u2019re family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson still stays in touch with the friends she made in Nepal, and hopes to bring some of the practices she learned there \u2013 like the 30-minute morning tea breaks she enjoyed with her team \u2013 to her new job in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she hopes that others will feel inspired to take their\nprofessional development abroad, experience other cultures and open their eyes\nto new ways of working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cIt humbles you,\u201d she\nsaid. \u201cIt humbled me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After completing a nursing internship in Nepal, Adrianne Thompson ’19 is inspired to stay in the field – and one day, open her own hospital abroad. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":117118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,49,48],"tags":[53,61,107,303,105],"class_list":["post-117110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-campus-announcements","category-science-and-tech","tag-academic-affairs","tag-advancement","tag-alumni-relations","tag-department-of-nursing","tag-helen-and-arthur-e-johnson-beth-el-college-of-nursing-and-health-sciences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Adrianne-4.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-usS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117110"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117141,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117110\/revisions\/117141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/117118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}