February 24th, 2019

Hola!

Today some of the group had the opportunity to head to another country...Uruguay! We started our day on a ferry (much like the one to PEI for all of the folks from Atlantic Canada), and were greeted by a very nice tour guide who showed us around the port town, Colonia. Here, we walked through markets, along beaches, and past bicycle races. Since this town was once controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese, both distinct styles of architecture were represented here. The cobblestone streets slanted towards the ocean so that rain water could empty without flooding the homes along the street.  In Colonia there were tons of stray dogs, laying in the street, lounging on steps, and chasing cars up and down the main roads. Luckily, Alicia had a bag of dog treats, and every dog she passed was given one, even though most of them are already fortunate enough to eat the leftovers given to them by tourists every day (our tour guide said they were much chunkier now that many tourists feed them their leftovers). For lunch we headed to a buffet, where they served us enough barbequed meat to sink a ship! After lunch, we spent some time in the sun, walking along the beach, and collecting some beach glass. Next, we headed to the lighthouse, and for only 1 US dollar you could climb to the top and have a view of the entire coast line as well as the markets and buildings below. Eventually, all of us ended up at the coastline, because we are all so used to being near the ocean. It felt like home. Around 7 o'clock we headed back to Argentina, and by 10 PM we were all tucked into bed. For those that didn't go to Uruguay, the other option on the table was a trip across town to the Parque Norte waterpark. After two minutes of the cab driver telling us in Spanish that it was too cold to go to the pool, and a 20 minute ride, our group of vitamin D deprived students arrived at the park. Unfortunately while there some of us underestimated the strength of the Argentinian sun... and were quite a bit redder heading home. All in all, it was a fabulous way to spend a Sunday off after a week of clinical, compared to shovelling snow back in Cape Breton. 

Your truly,
Katelyn, Johnny, and Daniel. 

Tuesday, February 26

As our days in beautiful Buenos Aires are coming to an end, the CBU nursing students and staff are trying to pack in as much learning, sight seeing, and souvenir shopping as we can before our bitter-sweet goodbye. Luckily for you guys, Taylor Allan and Kara Warren are here to tell you about our Tuesday.

Today, we had our second last early wake-up and travelled to our clinical projects. Today Taylor Allan and the rest of the students who are assigned to the Roffo Hospital were greeted with an opportunity to tour the palliative care unit of the hospital. The unit was unremarkable as you were welcomed with a sense of home. Families gather around a large kitchen table for meals and beloved Maté with their loved ones. Colorful drawings lined the walls, with a small library, arts and crafts center, and a wig room for the patients and their families to enjoy.

There are many volunteers at the Roffo Hospital, and luckily for the patients, many of these volunteers offer free non-pharmaceutical therapies to help relieve the patient’s pain, anxiety, or stress. Today we learned about sounds therapy also known as singing bowl therapy. The volunteer spins the turning fork around the bowl and creating vibrations that are transmitted to the pressure points and areas of stress on the patient’s body. This therapy helps to reduce pain, depression, anxiety, stress, and improve memory!

Kara went to her placement at the Gutiérrez Hospital de Niños for the morning, and got to play with the kids waiting in the ER. The volunteers provide recreational activities in the emergency room, including books, colouring pages, blocks, and lots of other toys. The children loved all of the activities, and were very curious about the volunteers. Some of the older kids were even teaching the students how to say some colours in Spanish using crayons.

Nearing the end of our trip, most of the students spent the afternoon visiting the different attractions around the city. Some went to La Boca and got souvenirs to bring back to their friends and family, others visited the Recoleta cemetery to view some of the noteworthy above ground vaults. 

At 5:30 the CBU Nursing students and staff were greeted by Victor Piccininni, the author of “El Arte de Acompanar” (The Art of Accompanying) who was able to give us a presentation related to his views and ideas about palliative care. Mr. Piccininni really stressed the importance of what he feels to be the 3 stages of the dying process; chaos, acceptation, and transcendence. We had a great discussion about how families also go through the dying process with the patient, and how important it is for the family to help the patients follow through the process instead of interfering. Promising patients that they are going to be okay, may give them a false sense of hope which would interfere with their dying process. “We don’t accompany someone’s death or illness. We accompany the process of the good dying of a person and we put ourselves in the disposition to give our best help so that that person transits from the chaos, passing through the acceptance… until arriving at the spiritual transcendence. Thus, we witness the birth of a new being that will continue with its evolutionary process.” -Victor Piccininni.

Monday, February 26th photos

Monday, February 26th
We are now on our final week of our journey in Argentina and although we are looking forward to coming home to see our family & pets, we are sad to be leaving such a beautiful, unique place. 

Today we went to La Sarten por el Mango. This is a community based after school program for children ages 6-12. The area where the children are from is quite poor and run down, unfortunately many of the children that attend the program are living in poverty. 

The founders Ben and Valé were there to greet us upon arrival at 10am. They gave us an orientation to the program and explained their mission to us. Ben and Valé explained they believe in using a holistic approach to create a program for the children. Something that was mentioned by Ben was that they do focus a lot on health. This is because they believe that if children are not healthy, they will struggle to learn.. how true!  With that being said, this place provides the children with a little bit of everything. The after school program offered children a safe place for learning activities, play and physical activities, nutritious meals, opportunities for communication, and forming relationships with peers and mentors. With the goal to give the children all the life skills they need to succeed in life and form a stronger community. The building includes everything that a great after school program needs! A classroom, multipurpose room, kitchen, basketball court and even a dog and cat!

Once we finished our orientation, we started our volunteer work! We helped make pizzas and paint the programs new vehicle with colorful designs until the kids arrived at 1330. When the kids arrived, they were so welcoming, and seemed so excited to meet us Canadians. We played various games including hopscotch, skip rope & basketball (we felt like kids again ourselves and enjoyed every minute of it); followed by sharing the delicious pizza we made, and oranges for desert (this was by far our favourite meal).

After finishing up eating, the CBU nursing students taught the kids about proper hand hygiene by teaching them the 6 steps of hand hygiene. We made it more memorable for the kids by putting the steps into a song! After that we did a small health assessment on the children including measuring their weight, height and waist circumference.

To finishing off our activities we then sat down in a big circle and had a concert by our very own famous fiddler Jennifer Roland and two of the guys who worked there joined in with a guitar and some drums. The kids loved  it and so did we. Many of the children participated in playing instruments and singing along.

We then had a second snack carrot cake and banana smoothies and reflected on the day we had, each one of us told one another one special moment about our day as a reflection about how the day went.

This was definitely one of our favourite days in Buenos Aires. It was amazing to see how all our nursing students could make a connection with the children despite the language barrier. Just goes to show there is SO much more to communication than just words. This is something we will carry in our nursing practice forever. It was very heart warming to see the wonderful relationships the kids had with the instructors at the program. The kids had so much respect for the instructors, and it was quite obvious where they get it from, as the instructors demonstrated lots of respect for the children.. they were wonderful role models. 

In closing, the students had a wonderful day at this program, an experience we will remember throughout our career for a lifetime. We cannot thank the founders enough for having us, they are truly amazing, selfless people.

Here is a website where you can go see what the program is all about! They also always accept donations! 

http://Socialopportunitygroup.com 

Thanks for reading!

Day 7 - Saturday, February 23

Keisha Googoo and Alicia MacKinnon here, checking in on our 1 week anniversary of the start of our nursing experience! A whole week gone by already with only 1 more week to go.

After a long week of working on our projects and waking up by 6 am everyday, we had time to enjoy our free Saturday and participate in cultural or leisure activities. There are lots of things to do in Buenos Aires, one of which is to visit the La Recoleta Cemetery (Cementario de la Recoleta).

The Recoleta Cemetary entrance. Known as one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world contains "above ground" graves of notable people such as the presidents of Argentina.

The cemetery contains rows and rows of monumental burial sites with family members inside each monument in their casket. 

To start off this day, many of us took the opportunity to enjoy a sleep-in past 6 am. That said, many of us were up and ready by 9 am as we didn't want to waste anytime sleeping when we could be enjoying the city.

Initially, we had a plan to enjoy an afternoon in the colorful community of La Boca. However, due to the rain, we decided to postpone this experience for a sunny day. This freed up time for all the students and teachers and so we divided into groups to do our own activities. Some of us went to the mall in Palermo or to the local shopping outlets, others ventured the city to explore, while some enjoyed some down time within the hostel.

By late afternoon the majority of us were getting ready to head to the Ed Sheeran concert. Although the concert didn't technically start until 9pm, most of us were out the door between 4-5pm.

A group of beautiful ladies ready for the concert!! Very excited. 

The concert was held in "Campo de Polo' which is a huge stadium that is able to fill about 30,000 people (not including the surrounding seats). The wait for Ed was interesting as we have seen the most rain since our sunny experience in Argentina. Soaking wet and sore from standing for hours, it was well worth the wait once Ed Sheeran made his appearance. According to Ed, Argentina has been his loudest audience on his previous tour so he put his crowd to the test once again!

Campo de Polo Stadium (before it was filled)!!

As the rain picked up, many of us started buying ponchos. Here is our one and only Amanda Sawler rocking her blue poncho, ready for Ed! 

Stage set up for our lovely Ed.

Before he came out, opening acts include Silvina Moreno and Passenger with some great tunes to kick off the show!

Ed put on this football jersey for his encore acts! We were very impressed with his ability to work a stage independently !! He is so great. 

After the show, many of us were not prepared for the lengths we would have to go through to get back to the hostel. The traffic was insane! With some getting through efficiently, others had to adapt to the city style of standing between two busy streets to flag down a cab. We were happy and relieved to have all made it back to the hostel safely. Not getting back until midnight, some went to get a bite to eat, some jumped into the shower to wash the mud off our feet, while others went to bed as quickly as possible to get some rest before an early wake-up call to travel to Uruguay the following Sunday.

It has been an amazing day and it's safe to say that we all love and adore Ed Sheeran.

Friday Feb 22

Hola chicas y chicos! Many of us are picking up on some simple Spanish terms and using them to improve our effective communication! I’d recommend learning as much Spanish as you can if Buenos Aires is a destination of interest for you (and it should be!!) Not just because of the hot weather, beautiful architecture and incredible food but also for the wonderful and friendly people we’ve met thus far!

Today’s blog is brought to you by Mikayla Ayre and Mary-Beth MacDonald. We are both in the accelerated nursing program at CBU and we’re going to tell you about our busy day. The day started early (6AM for lots of us) and we headed off in our separate directions.

Today, Katie Rogers and I (Mary-Beth) had a once in a lifetime experience when we were chosen to observe an open-heart surgery on a pediatric patient that took place at Hospital Gutierrez. The patient was an 18-month-old girl with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This means she was born with only the right ventricle of her heart and an underdeveloped aorta. This was causing excessive work for the single ventricle and was allowing oxygenated and non-oxygenated blood to mix leading to heart failure, fatigue and slow growth. The surgeons explained that 40% of the cardiac surgeries performed at are Hospital Gutierrez due to single ventricle defects but that this procedure was very rare. The surgery involved using a patch and the bottom part of the patient’s pulmonary artery to create a larger aorta and attaching the superior vena cava to the pulmonary artery. This allows deoxygenated blood from the body to become oxygenated by the lungs without entering the heart, therefore reducing the workload on the single ventricle. We were able to see the one- way direction of blood flow on a transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in the operating room. After 6 long hours, the surgery was complete and successful! Its hard to describe the feeling and emotion of watching a tiny heart begin to beat again after being taken off machines—so just WOW! We had the chance to accompany her to a recovery/intensive care unit with only 5 beds before we had to say our goodbyes and meet up with the rest of the group at Hospital Rivadavia. Everyone was excited and curious (and maybe a little envious) about our day and we were thrilled to share our stories.

Photo of the OR

Mikayla here! While Mary-Beth and Katie were having their once in a lifetime experience, the group of students who are assigned to Roffo hospital (Cancer Research Hospital) met with a psychologist who works at Roffo, Dr. Yanina Gabriela Piccinni, to discuss art therapy and positive psychology. Every session starts with a bit of meditation, focusing on the heart and your breathing, and visualizing the colors that radiate from your heart. The patients use the inspiration from this exercise to create art through drawings or paintings. Music is usually played while the patients draw/paint. Dr. Piccinni guided us through a short art therapy session so we could better understand. During our session she played the Beatles (one of my faves!) And I found that a mood booster in itself!  It was interesting to find out that art therapy has to be conducted by a psychologist due to the emotions that may surface during therapy that need to be properly assessed by a professional so that the client will be able to work through their feelings. Dr. Piccinni also said that encouraging the client to change the color they are using may affect their mood. For example, if they are drawing with black or dark colors to encourage them to use brighter colors like yellow and their mood may improve. The whole therapy is based around focusing on the strengths and the positive aspects of the person rather than their illness. This is a very important concept we have seen many times at Roffo. It's very important to look at the person as a person and not just their illness as we have learned in nursing school. Here, they focus on six strengths developed by a doctor named Selligman. These strengths are wisdom, courage, humanity, transcendence, justice, and moderation. I found this presentation very insightful and we can definitely think about these strengths when nursing at home, and possibly advocate for more services in our community such as art therapy!

The art therapy presentation

Art therapy demonstration

A meaningful quote

We said goodbye to the fantastic staff and volunteers at Roffo, and made our way to Pechoue on foot! Pechoue is a program run  through the hospitals in Argentina. It is for youth with mental health issues who need help reintegrating back into society and the work force. At Pechoue, trained volunteers teach the clients life and job skills such as administration, finances, farming, and gardening. The clients work 4 days a week with Tuesday being a rest day and weekends off, they get paid a small sum of money for their work until they can leave Pechoue and find a job. However some clients do return as volunteer staff. We were not able to participate one on one with the clients since the volunteers require extensive training, however we helped out by making “eco-blocks". Eco-blocks are used to replace traditional wooden fencing between crops since wood degrades easily in this climate and the nails falling to the ground pose a safety hazard. Eco-blocks are large plastic bottles that are stuffed with plastic wrappers and styrofoam that would normally be thrown away. This gives the bottles  firmness and weight to be able to use them as fencing. It's a pretty cool way to reuse trash if you ask me! And since the plastic doesn't break down, it lasts for a very long time!

Belinda packing her "eco-block"

A finished "eco-block"

We hopped on a bus to our next stop: Rivadavia hospital for some sexual education. Mary-beth and Katie met us there with huge smiles on their faces from their awesome experience in the OR. Daniel, one of the physicians at the hospital, discussed with us the problems the population here faces in regards to reproduction. In our population back home, our biggest issue is STIs related to the lack of condom use due to the more common use of birth control pills as contraceptives. However, here the problem is more basic. Many people do not use contraceptives or are not educated on the availability of contraceptives or proper use, so the amount of babies being born per year is very high, with 700 000 babies born last year. They also have an issue here with teenage pregnancy that could possibly be related to private catholic schools not teaching sexual education, and parents keeping their children home from public school on the days sexual education is happening. However, there are many forms of contraceptives available here in health clinics, schools, and hospitals such as “the pill" and condoms. We even had a demonstration by our very own Lindsay Kelly on how to properly put on a condom and explaining how to check if it is still good to use (good expiry date, wrapper intact, etc.). It was great practice to educate the class on condom use to practice for when we would educate patients. Good job Lindsay!

                     Sexual education
Friday evening, we had our first rainfall (and most of us were happy to see a slight shift from the heatwave.) A crowd gathered on the rooftop to watch an amazing lightning show while some others took in the loud thunder crashes from the comfort of their rooms!

Some of us learned just how kind Argentinians really are when they returned Kara’s cellphone that was accidentally left behind in a cab. Near miss!

Some students did some exploring after clinical and found a really cool antique shop!

                  Johnny at the antique shop
We are all missing our families (humans and pets included) back in Canada but we’re not quite ready to return just yet. We’d like to thank you all for following along and we can’t wait to see what week 2 has in store for us.
Ciao!

Thursday, February 21

Hi everyone! It’s Amanda and Brittney. We are both 4th year CBU Nursing Students on the International Nursing Experience to beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina. We started off our day early this morning to get a bus to the Roffo hospital which is a cancer care and research centre. This is an amazing facility unlike anything offered in Nova Scotia. The campus has multiple buildings separated according to which type of cancer (lung, liver, skin, etc.) will be treated there, and in 2016 over 100,000 people were treated in this one location! The facility opened in 1912 by Roffo who was a oncologist and  researcher. His wife, Helena, also opened the school of nursing at the facility which is still open today and takes in 60 students each year. His son is also the focus of one of Argentina’s most famous paintings called “2 big friends” which featured Roffo’s son and his St. Bernard (Amanda LOVED this). The hospital has 80 inpatient beds but also has countless outpatients each day which are treated through chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy. 

Our second presentation, also at La Roffo) focused on the health system in Argentina which has 3 sectors. The first is public which everyone living in Argentina has equal access to for free (well, with taxes). Many people also travel from Bolivia and Peru to access Argentina’s health care at no cost. The second is social which would be similar to an employees health insurance in Canada such as Manulife where the employees pay cheque is deducted each month. The third option of private health insurance would be at a cost of about $600-700 US dollars per month for a family of 5 paid completely out of pocket. Private and social insurance give quicker access to certain treatments, appointments and medications that the public sector may have to wait a longer period of time for (up to a week for medications that are readily available in Canada). Much like our home there is a large shortage of health care staff in rural areas. So much so that some housekeeping staff are providing nursing care in some settings. 

Next, after a very long, bumpy and smooshy ride on the bus we arrived at our next stop. A public hospital called general de Aguados Bernardino Rivadavia. This hospital was built in 1889 and it services many different illnesses, diseases and speciality (Eating disorders, ENT, gynecology, cardiology) as well as offering emergency care to 800-900 people a day with wait times of 20 minutes to 2 hours! We also saw the museum in the hospital which showed many of the instruments and supplies the hospital used in its early days. We were especially surprised by the obstetrical (birthing) instruments. While 10 of us went through the small museum at a time the other students had an impromptu NCLEX prep sessions administered by our fearless leaders Debbie, Belinda, Angela and Kim where we went over normal lab values, HELP syndrome, etc. We then had an in depth discussion about Argentinian vs. Canadian health care with the doctor and had a large focus on the reproductive rights of Argentinian women. They have a large issue of illegal abortion and women dying due to unsafe practices and being forced to deliver babies after situations of sexual assault and mental health issues. After a very informative group discussion we had a tour of the beautiful hospital grounds and back to the hostel we went for some much needed cold water and after-clinical relaxation before heading out to the streets to deliver donations to the homeless population in the city centre. 

Our ankles are swollen and so are our hearts. This is the experience of a life time!