Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
\n![\"Karen,](\"http:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/CHSimages\/Karen%2C%20Jemimah%20and%20Ruby.JPG\")
Karen Drake is a tall, strong woman whose primary home is now Minneapolis but who has spent most of her life on foreign missions of one kind or another. She lived with her parents in Japan until she was 17 years old, becoming fluent in all things Japanese.<\/p>\n
\nAfter finishing nursing school in the U.S., however, she ended up as a mission nurse in what was first Rhodesia which became Zimbabwe. Karen directed and taught in a nursing school in Zimbabwe. She and a missionary physician, Dave, 20 years her senior, fell in love, surprising and delighting the missionary community in Zimbabwe with their engagement and wedding. Their two children, now young adults, were born and raised there.<\/p>\n
It was Karen who had the original vision for a school of nursing at Uganda Christian University through a trail of connections following Karen and Dave\u2019s return to the U.S. where Karen ultimately found work as nursing educator and director of the simulation lab at Bethel University in Minneapolis. Through several grants from Fulbright, Karen did the original work of exploring options for UCU\u2019s nursing program. She visited all the major nursing schools in Uganda as well as meeting with government and university officers to determine the feasibility of a new BSN or BNS (Bachelor of Nursing Science), as they like to call it, in Uganda.<\/p>\n
During one of those meetings, she met Jemimah Mutabaazi, at that time the only nurse in Uganda with an MSN which Jeminmah had earned from Case Western Reserve University some years prior. Jemimah was and is Uganda\u2019s highest ranking nurse, head of its nursing board and nursing association. Karen asked Jemimah for ideas about finding faculty.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just advertise and then people like me will respond,\u201d said Jemimah, smiling. And promptly joined the new school of nursing as its director. The two of them planned an RN-BNS program, viewing that as the most feasible strategy for elevating nursing in Uganda. Nurses and midwives are educated separately although most nurses add midwifery to their credentials. Almost all nurses in Uganda are educated in programs similar to the diploma programs.<\/p>\n
![\"Nurse](\"http:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/CHSimages\/Nurse%20Ed%20Study.jpg\")
Karen says nursing in Uganda is similar to the practice of nursing in the U.S. in the 1950s with few nurses doing assessments of any kind, the nursing process virtually unknown, and nursing record keeping absent from the rudimentary patient \u201cfile\u201d as it is called here. Nurses basically hand out medications and keep order in the hospitals and clinics. Any vital signs they take gets recorded in the physicians\u2019 or \u201cclinical officer\u2019s\u201d (similar to a PA) records.<\/p>\n
As the new RN-BNS program saw its first graduation approach, Karen and Jemimah became even more daring in their vision: they saw Uganda\u2019s premier and one of its only MNS programs at UCU. They admitted their first MNS class in May, 2008. Their second MNS class starts this September.<\/p>\n
Karen has come to UCU several times a year the past several years and keeps in close contact with Jemimah, the graduate students, and the UCU administration through email and phone when she is in the States. She was here for the past 10 days to orient me and to meet with students to help them get an independent study completed. I do not know how I would have done the work they are giving me without that orientation because most of Jemimah\u2019s time is spent with the RN-BNS students. The MNS program is largely dependent on doctorally prepared visiting instructors which puts them at some risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what we would have done if you hadn\u2019t come,\u201d said Karen. \u201cYou are just what we needed at this time. I had no idea how we were going to find faculty for this year.\u201d Their MNS is nursing education and leadership focused. I\u2019ll be teaching a course on \u201cTeaching and Learning Processes for Adults\u201d to the new MNS group just starting and \u201cRole Development for Nursing Leadership\u201d for the second year students. I\u2019ll also be teaching their research seminar course, and assisting them in finishing their independent study.<\/p>\n
Classes start the second week of September so I have until then to prepare courses I\u2019ve never taught before in a British type system about which I have yet much to learn. For example, in their grading system, 80-100 is an A. I find this utterly incomprehensible and will need some time to force my brain to accept this. It is certainly not something I\u2019ll bring back to the U.S. with me! A score of 50 is passing. But I\u2019ve experienced instant rapport with both Jemimah and Karen and expect their mentoring to continue, Karen from Minneapolis, Jemimah here. And I\u2019ve met the second-year students twice now and bonded instantly with them, too: Faith, Elizabeth, Mercy, Grace, Agnes, Keren, and Moses, the only male and a dedicated mental health nurse who is father to two single birth children and two sets of twins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat will make it possible,\u201d I said to my father over breakfast this morning, \u201cis that the classes are so small. There are only 7 students in the second year class and only 6 in the new class.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat will mean you can pay them lots of individual attention,\u201d said my father, a veteran teacher. We had just come back from walking the track at the university. Yesterday on the return trip from our track visit, we saw, perched high in a tree, our first monkey with a long red tail and red whiskers who pointedly seemed to turn his face away from us when we stopped to stare at him.<\/p>\n
I am really enjoying getting to spend time with my father. His presence also seems to delight the Ugandans for whom older parents are persons due profound respect. Dad may pose some challenges, however. When I asked him if he had any laundry for me to do, he said, \u201cJust a few small things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you have any trousers?\u201d I asked, surprised, knowing he\u2019s worn the same pair for nearly two weeks now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t wash my pants for months,\u201d he said. I was appalled.
\n\u201cDad, I\u2019m shocked. Mom would never have put up with that,\u201d I said.
\n\u201cYour mother complicated life unnecessarily,\u201d he said, smiling. \u201cMy clothes were worn out from her washing, not from my wearing.\u201d And we both laughed and then fell silent, remembering her.<\/p>\n
I remembered that strong, beautiful woman who regularly wiped her door handles with bleach and whose ashes lie slumbering on that gentle hillside in southeastern Ohio awaiting that last trumpet. I believe in the resurrection of the body. I believe in the communion of the saints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog Karen Drake is a tall, strong woman whose primary home is now Minneapolis but who has spent most of her life on foreign missions of one kind or another. She lived with her parents … Continue reading