28375: Hermantin(News)Students learn nursing lessons in Dominican Republic (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Mon, Apr. 24, 2006


EDUCATION
Students learn nursing lessons in Dominican Republic

By NOAH BIERMAN
nbierman@MiamiHerald.com

A group of Miami Dade College students returned this month from a field trip 
into ``modern-day slavery.''

Traveling to a batey -- a sugar-cane plantation in the Dominican Republic 
populated by Haitian immigrants -- is not on the typical community-college 
syllabus. But 10 nursing students who went saw conditions and diseases not 
present in most U.S. clinics.

They saw a 13-year-old mother playing with toys, her child sleeping in a shack 
while she was on break from working the cane fields. One student held a baby 
that nearly died as the clinic lost power.

They saw a father concerned that his 9-year-old son might be blind, a double 
threat because the disability would deprive him of a home if he could not work 
in the fields.

''I think the frustration is that you're there and you're just basically 
putting a Band-Aid on a bigger problem,'' said Lori Kelley, 36, a licensed 
practical nurse training online to become a registered nurse.

The visit was led by the Haitian-American Professionals Coalition and included 
eight doctors along with a handful of other professionals. The trip happened at 
the same time K.K. Bentil has begun pushing for a more global outlook in MDC's 
nurse training since becoming president of the school's medical campus in 
November.

On the mission's first day, 500 people began lining up outside the clinic at 5 
a.m., more than four hours before the first patients were seen. Some had walked 
10 miles without shoes, the students said.

''You walk off the bus and they come over and hug you and thank you,'' said Jay 
Carrion, 35, a part-time nursing student from Coral Gables who holds a 
full-time finance job.

The doctors and nurses treated more than 1,000 people with a range of 
conditions including skin lesions, hypertension and machete wounds. The bateyes 
are sugar cane plantations populated by an estimated 20,000 Haitian immigrants 
who live in some of the Western Hemisphere's poorest conditions.

Kelley, like others who visit the bateyes, came away believing it was ``modern 
day slavery.''

The cane cutters earn small salaries and, as illegal immigrants, have little 
protection against threats. Most live in shacks and the students said 
malnutrition is rampant.

The Miami group stayed an hour away from La Higuera Batey, in a popular resort 
village in La Romana. Their all-inclusive hotel offered the amenities that have 
made the Dominican Republic a popular tourist destination in recent years -- a 
bar by the swimming pool, a choice of four restaurants, salsa and merengue 
lessons.

The students would donate their boxed lunches to the children of the batey and 
walk through the hotel's marbled lobby wearing hospital scrubs every day.

''We could eat all we want, but I could not eat,'' said Rita Williams, a 
41-year-old letter carrier from Miramar who is studying part-time to become a 
registered nurse. ``To see these people not eating . . . I felt like I was 
taking food from them.''

Williams said she was not prepared for what she would see, ``a child that's 4 
years old and weighs 18 pounds. I wasn't looking for that.''

Marie Etienne, a nursing professor at MDC, had been on a prior mission to the 
bateyes in October, also with the Haitian-American Professionals Coalition.

'That's when I felt, `Oh my God, this is so good. I need to expose students to 
this,' '' she said.

Etienne coordinates community health nursing courses, in which students are 
required to spend at least 23 hours serving the community. She opened the 
Dominican trip to anyone who could pay their own way -- about $1,200 for the 
week. She's planning future trips and Kelley said she plans to donate her own 
money to help future students attend because the college does not cover any 
costs.

Beyond learning cultural sensitivity and a service mentality, the students saw 
diseases they would not normally encounter at home.

''You've heard of malaria, but not everybody's seen malaria. You hear of 
impetigo, but not everybody sees impetigo,'' Etienne said, referring to a 
blistering skin infection that afflicts many in the developing world.

Kelley got her church involved through the food bank that she directs, 
collecting 900 pounds of medicine, toys and clothing. The doctors on the trip 
donated 800 pounds of medical supplies. One church member, an American Airlines 
employee named Reuben Vega, escorted about half the supplies to the Dominican 
Republic.

Carrion said he initially signed up because he believed it would be a harmless 
way to fulfill a requirement, ''what I call nonsense community hours,'' while 
staying at a luxury hotel.

One day, he held a 7-month-old boy in his arms who was showing severe signs of 
distress.

''Normally, you take this child here and the first thing that's available to 
you is all this technology,'' he said, comparing it with the situation in 
Miami.

The clinic had a machine and Carrion tried to hook it up. Then the power went 
off. He and the child's mother ran two doors away to a generator owned by a 
Catholic mission.

''We were able to do the whole treatment for 20 minutes, and within 15 minutes 
the child was jumping and alive and pushing me away, which is what you want to 
see,'' Carrion said. ``I don't know what these people would have done.''