Study Abroad Nursing

NRSE 414 Professional Nursing Role offered through Central Connecticut State University is taking a class of registered nurses to Dublin, Ireland, in March 2011, and I am signed on. This is part of my RN-to-BSN Program. The subtitle of the trip is A Cross-cultural Comparison of U.S. and Irish Health Services for Marginalized Populations.

Here is the book list:

• SPRING 2011
• NRSE
• 414
• 70

Remove Course

• POLICY+POLITICS IN NURSING+HEALTH CARE
• REQUIRED

Author:MASON Edition:5TH 07 Publisher:ELSEVIER ISBN:9781416023142

Purchase Option Used if available$64.35 New$85.80

• SEX TRAFFICKING
• REQUIRED

Author:KARA Edition:08 Publisher:PERSEUS D ISBN:9780231139601

Purchase Option Used if available$19.10 New$25.45

• IRISH APARTHEID
• REQUIRED

Author:BURKE Edition:N/A Publisher:IRISH BKS ISBN:9781848400368

Of the three, only Sex Trafficking is available in an e-book format, so I went that route. This book is utterly unbearable and, as testament to that, of my eight stalwart online reading companions of the last fourteen years, only one, so far, is able to entertain reading it with me. It is unbearable to read alone. The ninth stalwart reading companion, beloved friend, died just this past December. She might have had the courage to hold me up while I read this book. Who's to say?

For any readers who don't know me, nursing is a second (third? fourth?) career for me. In the 1980's I spent a decade working in commercial banking as an executive assistant. Now that's a broad term and a fancy way of saying "secretary" but as the all-out geek and techno-guru that I am, the experience was varied and rich. It afforded a bird's eye view of the inner workings of a banking industry always on the cusp of another merger. This meant a constant eye on "asset quality" and "scrubbing" to retain only the best portfolios, i.e., the loans most likely to be repaid.

Hence the rapacious greed that marked the banking and finance industry as we trolled through the nineties and into the New Millennium seemed a stranger in town. By then, I had moved on, raising a young family and tending my husband's business.

Although now the Mortgage Crisis is history, we're still reeling from it, with record unemployment that shows no sign of abating. Questions keep arising over the past 10 to 15 years as I have observed these changes. I have wondered: where is our food grown? who is growing and harvesting our food? who makes our clothes and all the things we buy? Because we know manufacturing has been "exported" and our farms sold, the land "developed."

Four years ago I returned to rural Erie County, Pennsylvania, for a high school class reunion. It is still rural and beautiful, the rolling farmland unsullied by residential sprawl. The odd, remarkable, feature, though, is that the farms are now owned and operated by nameless, faceless, corporations. The people seen working the fields "look foreign." Indeed, the conservative cry is to stem illegal immigration. "They're taking our jobs!!!"

Before I started reading this book, I wondered whether those workers had any protection under The Law. Illegal immigrants brought in to work cheaply are a boon to employers who don't want to pay Worker's Comp insurance, provide health insurance, or adhere to wage and overtime laws. Do they have any protections for their personal safety and well-being? Now I wonder whether they're paid at all. The same holds true for people I see working construction sites, and that darn nagging suspicion is given weight in this book also.

Lastly, for now, consider the plight of young adults today, graduating from college with such a heavy burden of debt that marriage, family, and homeownership are postponed indefinitely. Can you say "indentured servant?" "Bonded labor?" Consider the plight of the mid-aged worker, not yet old enough or ready for retirement, but whose job has either been made obsolete or outsourced. Americans of all ages are looking for ways to reinvent themselves in a world of shrinking employment opportunities. I am beginning to understand that the allure of "cheap labor abroad" spells exploitation of disadvantaged poor and often war-ravaged people. And the way that we have mortgaged our lifestyle since the 1950's has made us increasingly vulnerable to an existence of fewer choices and loss of freedom.

What does this have to do with my upcoming Ireland Study Abroad experience? That remains to be seen. I'll keep you posted.

Read with me!