A new volunteer and a new clinical partner

Welcome to Corina Oudijk from the Netherlands who is volunteering at the College of Nursing until August 2010. Corina is teaching medical surgical nursing and supervising students at the Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed www.crp-bangladesh.org . We have just started working with this amazing institution that provides medical and nursing care, rehabilitation and art and vocational therapy to adults and children.

A busy spring semester at the College of Nursing

In February, Dr. Rycki Maltby of University of Vermont, USA brought her Public Health Nursing class to Dhaka. The students visited local community health programs and shared classes with IUBAT students. These exchanges help students develop deeper understanding both of cultural and resource differences and universal health goals. Many thanks to our spring 2010 volunteers, Crissy George, Brenda Hutton, Cailey Lynch and Alysha Savji. They taught Community Nursing, Medical-Surgical Nursing and Nursing Fundamentals. Brenda and Cailey also supervised medical surgical students in United Hospital and maternity nursing students at the Centre for Woman and Child Health.

First College of Nursing graduate for 2010

Congratulations to Roshani Kandel. In January, having competed all the coursework, Roshani successfully defended her research project, and completed oral and written comprehensive exams to graduate with a BSN from IUBAT. Well done, Roshani. We look forward to hearing about your professional accomplisments.

Globe and Mail features IUBAT Nursing

In December 2009 Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail wrote about our project for the series "Things That Work". Photos showed Karen Lund teaching in an IUBAT classroom and Lynn Buhler at her Vancouver Coastal Health office. Karen was quoted, "The program's biggest challenge is helping students accustomed to a rote memorization style of learning adapt to a system based on critical thinking and problem solving." Melodie Hull from College of the Rockies said, “These students will be able to change the way nursing is seen and how it does its work in Bangladesh." Thanks to the paper's National Affairs reporter Wendy Stueck for the great story.

Connecting with CAIN members

The Canadian Association for International Nursing held its first educational session in Vancouver in November with the theme, “Global Health Practice: Dreaming It, Thinking It Through and Doing It.” Alex Berland described some of the lessons learned from our project concluding, “Sometimes, you have to take a leap into the unknown.” All the presentations will be posted at http://www.cainursing.ca/ where you can also find out how to join CAIN.

Thanks to our friends at Mid-Main Community Health Centre

In early November 2009 Alex Berland and John Richards attended the Board of Directors’ meeting at Mid-Main Community Health Centre, to report on progress with the College of Nursing. As the project sponsor, MMCHC has been a key supporter from the outset. Directors Deirdre Evans, John Richards and Katia Wong have all visited and taught at IUBAT. You can read more about the other activities of this progressive primary health care clinic at www.midmaincommunityhealth.net.

Two new articles about IUBAT College of Nursing

Two of our intrepid volunteers have published accounts of their recent experiences in Dhaka. During summer 2008, Robin Scobie, a faculty member at University of Victoria, developed and taught one of the community health nursing courses. Her report is in the June issue of X-Claim! the newsletter from the Xi Eta Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International http://www.xieta.nursing.ubc.ca/XClaimJune2009.pdf.

Katie Scott, an Emergency Room nurse from Alberta, has made two trips to IUBAT to teach medical-surgical nursing. You can read her account in the Journal of Emergency Nursing July 2009:35 (4): 277-398. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0099-1767%2809%2900147-0