{"id":21156,"date":"2014-08-19T15:36:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T19:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=21156"},"modified":"2014-09-05T15:45:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T19:45:21","slug":"biomedicine-grad-students-deepen-compassion-through-cross-cultural-stints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/biomedicine-grad-students-deepen-compassion-through-cross-cultural-stints\/","title":{"rendered":"Biomedicine grad students deepen compassion through cross-cultural stints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Graduate students in the medical field do not usually study abroad as part of their collegiate experience. But the two-year-old MA in biomedicine<\/a> program at Eastern Mennonite University is designed to teach its students to look at biomedicine from a broad, multi-faceted perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur philosophy is very different,\u201d said biology professor Roman Miller<\/a>, PhD, who directs the program. \u201cBiomedicine, health and healing need to be holistic. It takes more than biology, math and physic courses to understand the human person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early visionaries decided to adapt the undergraduate cross-cultural requirement to biomedicine graduate students, giving it a medical twist. They believed that students needed exposure to the kind of diversity they were likely to encounter as biomedical professionals.<\/p>\n

\"Chris\"
Chris Dreikhorn at a microscope in rural Guatemala<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The result is a three-week summer course titled Cross-Cultural Health Care\/Biomedicine in which students examine the\u201cdifferentiation of resources, social, psychological, and spiritual ideas, contrasting the student\u2019s personal culture with the explored culture,\u201d according the course description. It also explains that students may study in a variety of different settings, but are expected to keep reflective journals and ultimately write a paper on their experience.<\/p>\n

EMU professors recommend two organizations to biomedical students. One, Concern America<\/a>, works in Guatemala, and the other, Appalachian Regional Healthcare<\/a>, has several locations in Kentucky. Four of the eight students that went on biomedicine cross-culturals this summer went to one of these locations. (One of the leaders in Guatemala of Concern America is EMU nursing<\/a> alumna Jeanette Nisly<\/a>.) The other four went to Tanzania, Costa Rica, Panama, and West Virginia, as well as to rural Bluefield, Virginia.<\/p>\n

The student\u2019s experiences were \u201ceye-opening\u201d said both Matt Tieszen (Guatemala) and Asad Ali (Kentucky) in separate interviews. Both Tieszen and Ali spent most of their time shadowing healthcare professionals as they worked in clinics and hospitals, or did home visits.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou read about development work and the importance of improving things like maternal healthcare, but you don\u2019t really get to see a lot of it in the States,\u201d said Tieszen, who went to Guatemala (with fellow student Chris Dreikhorn). Tieszen hopes to become a physician\u2019s assistant and is interested in practicing health work in an international setting.<\/p>\n

Ali (along with student David Abraham) traveled to Hazard and Whitesburg, Kentucky. For Ali, who is from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, rural Appalachia was just as foreign as crossing the border. He observed patients who came into the hospital with black lung from working in coalmines and shadowed a home health nurse on her house calls. \u201cThere were diseases there you just don\u2019t see in a city,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought that small isolated towns didn\u2019t exist anymore, but the cross-cultural was an eye-opener; it showed me that they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cross-culturals are \u201cnecessary for training health professionals because there is such a diversity in healthcare,\u201d said nursing and biomedicine professor Ann Hershberger<\/a>, PhD. She added that even though many graduate programs do not require cross-culturals, she believes that the healthcare immersion experience helps students to become more well-rounded, compassionate healthcare providers by exposing them to the kind of variety they are likely to encounter in practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graduate students in the medical field do not usually study abroad as part of their collegiate experience. But the two-year-old MA in biomedicine program at Eastern Mennonite University is designed ... read more about Biomedicine grad students deepen compassion through cross-cultural stints<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":21159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4515,264],"tags":[7923,15911,14783,15912,14782,17360,9491],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-21156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-graduate-programs","tag-ann-hershberger","tag-chris-dreikhorn","tag-concern-america","tag-david-abraham","tag-jeanette-nisly","tag-nursing","tag-roman-miller"],"yoast_head":"\nBiomedicine grad students deepen compassion through cross-cultural stints - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/biomedicine-grad-students-deepen-compassion-through-cross-cultural-stints\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biomedicine grad students deepen compassion through cross-cultural stints - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Graduate students in the medical field do not usually study abroad as part of their collegiate experience. 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