JC nursing students ready for trip

Seven Jamestown College senior nursing majors will be going to Chogoria, Kenya, for a 25-day trip where they will work at Chogoria Hospital, a facility closely affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

The students are Lisa Carlson, Krista Netser and Jo Oats, all of Jamestown; Taryn Treumer, Kensal, N.D.; Kari Spears, Minneapolis; Kristen Hesby, Lake Preston, S.D.; and Lindsey Hixson, Rapid City, S.D.. They will be accompanied by faculty members Dr. Jackie Mangnall and Dr. Teree Rittenbach on the overseas trip.

“The Presbyterian Church of the Northern Plains is a mission partner with the Chogoria area,” said Mangnall, chairperson of the Jamestown College nursing department.

“We want to develop a partnership between schools where we send students and give scholarships to their nursing students,” she said.

The hospital serves half a million people and is usually at capacity, Mangnall said.

“It’s a 300-bed facility that would look to an American like something from the 1930s or 1940s,” she said. “They have primitive wards but the nursing care is phenomenal, and it’s good for our students to be exposed to care like that.”

Not only will the nursing students be exposed to a different style of hospital care, they will travel to remote villages and help there, Mangnall said.

“They will work with children with malaria, they will do general medical and surgical procedures and they will deliver babies,” she said.

“They will be exposed to tropical diseases like AIDS and leprosy,” Mangnall said. “Something we will hopefully never see here.”

Before the trip, the students took a course in tropical diseases. They also must take hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diptheria, and yellow fever immunizations, along with a tetanus shot, Mangnall said.

Last year Jamestown College students weren’t able to travel to Chogoria because of civil unrest, but this year things have settled down, Mangnall said.

According to the BBC, the unrest calmed once Mwai Kibaki entered a power-sharing deal with his election rival Raila Odinga after both claimed to have won the December 2007 presidential election.

Mangnall is amazed by how vulnerable Kenya is, and how one thing will lead to another like dominos.

“The civil unrest has led to homelessness and now that has led to hunger,” she said.

The seven students are optimistic and ready to help.

“There’s nothing about this trip that’s not going to benefit us,” said Oats.

“I think it’s important for everybody to experience different cultures, expand their horizons and realize there are other people out there,” she said.

Oats has done clinicals with her other nursing students where they followed a registered nurse around at Jamestown Hospital, but never anything like what she expects at Chogoria.

“It’s going to be different and eye opening, their way of doing health care is going to be far less technology driven and far more natural than ours,” Oats said. “That’s going to be good for us.”

“I’m looking forward to delivering babies and working with pediatric disease like AIDS,” said Hixson.

She is also excited about being introduced to a whole new culture and a way of nursing that is more focused on care and not on technology, she said.

The students are not used to working without technology and will be giving some to Chogoria Hospital.

“We will be bringing glucometers to give to the hospital and a year’s supply of testing strips,” Hixson said.

Other students are excited to work with diseases that are rare in North Dakota.

Treumer said she is looking forward to working with diseases like malaria and seeing how the medical staff handles it, even though she is nervous about contracting a disease, she said.

Rittenbach, professor of nursing at Jamestown College, and Mangnall will also present lectures at the Clive Irvine College of Nursing at Chogoria Hospital.

“I will give a lecture or two on health care issues world wide, and Rittenbach will give lectures on blood disorders,” Mangnall said.

Sun reporter Ben Rodgers can be reached at 701-952-8455 or by e-mail at brodgers@jamestownsun.com

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