Dr. Jeff Osbourne, assistant professor of chemistry at Manchester College, took twelve students to Nicaragua this past January on a medical practicum. The students, consisting primarily of chemistry and biology majors, took the course in order to further their knowledge of Medicare and to provide healthcare to patients in need of medical assistance.

Eight medical personnel accompanied Osborne and the students: a dentist, pharmacist, a physician’s assistant, two emergency doctors, two internal medicine doctors and a pediatrician.   In addition, eight translators accompanied the group, and they, with their Spanish-language skills, truly made the trip possible.

The goal of the practicum was to assist as many patients as possible throughout the twenty-day stay which began on Jan. 2 and ended on Jan 22. To achieve this, the students and medical personnel provided health care resources to the people of Nicaragua, including giving out appropriate prescriptions and the right amount of dosages for each particular prescription. During the trip, the students attended to approximately 1500 patients, a number that shows the need for medical staff in this country.

Lauren Freels, a junior at Manchester College, took part in the trip and came away from it with a new sense of pride in providing the right types of medication to these patients in need. “Medical availability and doctors aren’t as easily accessible in Nicaragua as they would be in the U.S.,” she sad. “It really took me by surprise with how many people in these developing countries suffer due to lack of Medicare. They simply don’t have the resources that we have and it’s a shame that many patients can’t outlast the disease because of that.”

This trip marked Manchester’s eighteenth time traveling to a third-world country for the sole purpose of providing sufficient medical care and helping those in need. These trips are important because there’s an abundance of poverty that college juniors and seniors throughout the U.S. simply never get the chance to witness because of the unlimited amount of technology and resources that we have readily available to us.

While on the trip, Freels as well as many other students did quite a bit of sightseeing on the Nicaraguan streets when they weren’t called upon for Medicare. The students and faculty traveled the capital city of Managua learning the different customs and observing a type of lifestyle unlike our own. “We got the opportunity to experience the culture as a whole and the diverse ways in which they do things, “Freel said. “One of the more exciting things we did on our time off was visiting the sugar cane plantations. We saw how they made sugar cane which is something we take for granted over here. We also witnessed an active volcano.”

During this time, school in Nicaragua was out of session for the month of January so the students were able to stay at the Ciudad Antigua for sleeping purposes. The school as well as the town helped to supply the students with a comfortable place to stay by cleaning out a couple of the rooms and providing them with several mattresses laid out on the carpet.

One negative of the trip was that it students had to pay for it and they had to dig deep into their wallets to afford this opportunity. However, there were several ways around paying for the trip in its entirety. Some students applied for scholarships to go abroad.

A great deal of training was done for these overwhelmed students and many valuable experiences were gained in the month long trip to Nicaragua. “For me, living in their culture and being a part of their every day life was a huge wake-up call in realizing how much we really have and how much we truly take for granted,” Freels said. “Just seeing the look of gratitude on the patients’ face when you helped them was all I needed to know that I made a difference.”

The class was taken as a pass or fail grade and each student was asked to write a paper describing their experiences on the trip and then present those papers at a science seminar that took place in the Science Center on Feb. 18.

Freels noted that she would recommend future medical field prospects to take this class and learn how medicine concentrated in the United States is essential in saving people’s lives throughout developing countries such as Nicaragua. “If you’re interested in going into the medical field for your profession, this is something that would not only look good on your resume, but would also prepare you for real-life situations in dealing with medical care,” she said.

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