When the Global Health class began, I wasn't sure what to expect. Many classmates spoke of mission trips and other experiences, but this is an area I really didn't know anything about. I wondered if I was somehow going to be expected to nurse the whole world.

      As the course progressed, I began to learn how health problems, especially communicable diseases may seem like a faraway problem, but I quickly learned that global health is important not just to those far-away places, but also right here. I feel like this course helped to induce thought about how disease in other countries can be carried over to our population and affect our own health care climate and economy. I realized that it is important to keep current about global health topics and concerns.
The timing of this course was quite fortuitous, in light of the e-bola epidemic which was claiming many lives in Africa at that time. This horrible disease outbreak reinforced the fact that it is critical to stay updated on global affairs. As a nurse, we are expected to know of these topics and I did have patients who were scared of the disease and concerned that they could catch it. I felt I was prepared to answer my patient's concerns in a knowledgeable way because I was armed with the proper information.

      I am embarrassed to admit that I never really considered what health care was like in other countries until I took this class. Even though we studied countries with both great health care systems and the worst health care systems, it was interesting to see that the chronic diseases plaguing most countries were consistent. Although I don't think that I will have a lasting impact on global health care inequity, I can use this information to try to improve health care inequity that I may discover in my own practice environment.