Hello Everyone and welcome to The CBU International Nursing Experience 2020 blog!

We are all so excited for you to follow along on our international journey to Peru!

My name is Austin Chapman, I am one of the 22 nursing students attending this international experience. I am in my 3rd and final year of the BScN program at Cape Breton University. I am going to be blogging along with some of my classmates while we are in Peru, keeping you all up to date about each and every day and experience!

First I am going to give you all some background about how and why we got to go on this amazing international opportunity.

Every year for the past few years, CBU nursing students in their final year have been given the opportunity to participate in a volunteer, service learning, international nursing experience. This experience gives nursing students a look into what healthcare is like in other countries while providing volunteer services to the communities visited. With a growing and diverse culture in Cape Breton we believe it is important to travel and learn about health care in other countries, communities and cultures. Experiential learning is what our program is based on, and being culturally aware is a very important part of being a nurse. Gaining this experience will open our eyes to how other cultures live and how healthcare works in other parts of the world. Our main goal is to learn lots and bring back what we learn to Cape Breton and Nova Scotia so we can use this new found knowledge in our nursing practice back home.

So how does one go on such a trip? In order to go on this trip we needed a lot of community support and fundraising efforts! For a little less than a year our group worked on raising awareness for this trip and fundraised non-stop!

Fundraisers of all sorts: Some small fundraisers like- Basket draws, Gift card trees, lotto trees, etc. We had a few bigger fundraisers like our Auction at Steel City Sports Bar and Grill (which raised close to $13,000 for our trip!), A craft fair and flea market at CBU, weekly 50/50 tickets and so much more! You name it, we did it!

 But, we couldn’t have done it without our community and local businesses donating venues, items, and money towards fundraisers and other things! We cannot thank them enough! Really though, thank you!

About one month before we left, in preparation for this experience each of the students going did some research on Peru and presented our findings to each other. We covered topics from weather to economic status, healthcare quality, mortality rates and cultural beliefs. We also had our guide from United Planet (Callie Roberts) who we will be meeting in country present to us on important topics. She also let us know what we will be doing in Peru (both in regard to healthcare and country related activities).

What will we be doing in Peru? We will be providing patient support to clients in underprivileged communities in the fields of emergency medicine, Psychiatric, Dental and maternal/pediatric in the hospitals (Posta San Jeronimo and Posta Ttio) near Cusco, Peru. We will also be visiting a community centre/after school program called CooperarPeru and we will be providing health education and dental hygiene to youth at risk! In between our volunteer work we will also be participating in cultural activities to broaden our understanding such as visiting historic sites/landmarks and immersing ourselves in the Peruvian culture.

This is sure to be an experience of learning and new adventures!

That is all for now; stay tuned for more exciting information!