January 8th

By Courtney Schoen 

Maganda umaga po (good morning),

Today was a day filled with orientation and preparation for our clinical experiences that will be starting on this coming Wednesday, the 10th. We started out the morning meeting with ma’am Edena, who is the dean of nursing at Mary Johnston. She started out by welcoming us to the school and the Philippines and then got down to business. She began by informing us what we had to look forward to during our stay here at Mary Johnston and what the rules and dress codes was during our stay. The dress code states that if we are to come out of our rooms we must be wearing bottoms that are two finger widths above our knees or longer. We also were to be wearing sleeved shirts and clothes toed shoes.She finished off the meet with a funny comment by saying, “if we ever needed anything or money to go to our professors” which they didn’t find as funny as the students did.

The next task for the morning was to plan for the community clinical that we would be attending the opposite week of our hospital clinical. Together as a group we planned what we would need to pack and what meals were going to eat. During this meeting we realized how truly important rice was in the Filipino culture. This was noticed when we suggested making grilled cheese or spaghetti and they asked if we could have rice with this, but when we said no the American meals were completely shut down.

To finish off our day of training and orientation we attended a tour at the Mary Johnston hospital that was only 15 steps from the school. During this tour we were able to hear about the past, present and future of Mary Johnston. It was wonderful to hear of the goals they aspire to achieve in 10 years and we hope they can do so. While touring the hospital we were all finally able to realize how fortunate we are to work as nurses in the United States because of the ability to chart on computers and our love of technology. Everything they assess is charted on paper and paper only. The next shocking thing was being able to see the wards, which were rooms that contained 6 or more patients with only a small curtain to give them privacy. These wards are for people who cannot afford to pay for private or semi-private rooms. Mary Johnston Hospital caters to a diverse patient population; from the very poor to those who are well-off. This was very different from the patient rooms we have at hospitals at home which are either private or two-bed capacity rooms. The tour was very informative and helped us get a feel for what we are going to experience starting this week for half of the group.

With clinical starting on Wednesday the nerves are starting to worsen, but for now, we are going to relax for one more day before the real work begins!

Mary Johnston Hospital (front view)