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A group of 26 Lafayette students spent part of their summer in London, but it was no holiday break.
School and work consumed the lives of the students as they participated in the inaugural offering of Ethical & Social Issues in Health Care in the UK and the U.S. An information session on the course, which possibly will run again next May, will be held 7 p.m. Tuesday in 211 Oechsle Hall
The six-week class, which ran from May 23 to July 2, was the brainchild of Lafayette professors Steven E. Lammers, Helen H.P. Manson Professor of the English Bible, and Alan W. Childs, professor of psychology and head of the psychology department.
“The course involved comparing the United States and the United Kingdom health care systems from the social, ethical, and cultural aspects of each system,” Childs says.
Four days a week, the students interned at clinics, research facilities, shelters, schools, and a variety of other British institutions. The fifth day each week was reserved for class and student-centered discussion to compare experiences.
For some time, Lammers and Childs attempted to create a study abroad course that would allow students to have a first-person account of how countries outside the United States treat health care. Until the pair came into contact with the European Union Studies Association, the idea of taking students to another country to learn about its health care system did not make sense, they say.
EUSA places each student in an individual, intense working internship. This allows the students to be part of an actual component of the British health care system. Student placements included psychiatric wards, homes, and hospitals, refuge centers for women, research facilities, and government agencies.
“Most students know something about the U.S. system, whether by personal experience or hearing stories, and most of these students want to go into the health care system,” Childs says. “To be in the UK and witness and in some cases participate in the health care, it was just an incredible experience for them to be in the middle of the different culture but also to see a different approach to health care.”
Not only did the course show the students that there are different approaches to health care, it also provided them perspective on their own country’s system.
“I think Americans tend to be a little myopic about health care and they don’t really understand how bad the American health care system is,” Lammers says. “People end sentences with, ‘America has the best health care system in the world,’ but they don’t include, ‘If you can afford insurance.’ It’s really important that the students begin to see there are different ways you can do health care.”
Given their prominent internships, several students easily noticed the differences between the health care systems.
Neuroscience major Amanda Lincer ’07 (Port Washington, N.Y.) spent her time in London working with deaf people at the Blanche Neville School. One of the most challenging parts of the experience for her and fellow students was adapting to the work ethic of the foreign culture.
“A lot of the rules were different and other people found things to be very laid back organizationally and time wise,” says Lincer, who learned British Sign Language as part of the experience. “Another girl in another lab was astounded that everyone took a half-hour tea break and basically everyone stopped in the middle of what they were doing to go get tea. There were so many different approaches, things [medical personnel] did there, and we would never assume a clinic here would take that approach — just little things we would never think of doing.”
But Lincer thought that dealing with the quirks and overcoming the technical differences in the way British medical professionals perform their duties was just a small part of the overall experience.
“The hands-on approach enabled us to get a perspective on health care in the UK it is not something you can learn in a textbook,” she says.
Alexandra Gerry ’06 (Hopewell, N.J.), a double major in psychology and anthropology & sociology, says her internship in the eating disorder clinic not only gave her perspective, it guided the direction of her career path.
“There are a lot of positives about the U.S. and also I think there are a lot of negatives,” says Gerry, a junior who spent her summer at Rhodes Farm, an eating disorder clinic in London. “One of the biggest positives for the UK is that everyone has health care, but then again, the waiting list to get heart surgery is so long. In America, there are so many people; 40 million are uninsured and way more than that are underinsured and that needs to be dealt with, but if you can afford health care, you are going to get the best in the world.”
She explains, “There was this one girl there who had been in the clinic for about one year. She was severely underweight to the point that her hair was falling out, but she was this gorgeous girl. I didn’t know her when she was really ill, but I got to sit through her final session and hear her talk about how she had grown as a person and although she still had the anorexic mindset, she now had the confidence and knew that body image isn’t the only thing that matters.
“I was talking to her therapist afterwards, and he was just glowing. He knew he had helped this person overcome something that could be potentially life-threatening. I don’t think I would have wanted to pursue a path with eating disorders. A lot of people, when they think of eating disorders, they think of all these negative aspects, but it’s a really beautiful experience when you have someone who overcomes it.”
When Gerry goes on to graduate school and becomes a psychologist, she says that she will remember her London experience and potentially be able to incorporate some of the British concepts in her practice in the United States.
Such incorporation of British concepts is the long-goal of the program, Lammers and Childs say.
“The students who are really going to take this to the next level are going to see that there is another way of looking at the universe,” Lammers says. “Some students are going to go on to talk 10 years from now about the pub they went to or that they got to sit center court at Wimbledon, but there are going to be students who remember instead a conversation they had over tea or someone they met that showed them a new way of doing things. I can’t guarantee it for everyone; all we can do is set the stage for it.”
Childs says that in any course that compares two things, the hope is that students begin to understand there are many ways to solve a problem, in this case specifically relating to health care.
“Hopefully, since many of these students will help deliver health care, they will have a better understanding of how our style works and others work and maybe find ways to improve the delivery and consumption of health care,” he adds.
In the short term, the course equipped students with some tools they will find valuable as they continue their education at Lafayette.
“The biggest lesson everyone got was how to balance school and work and independence all at the same time,” Lincer says. “Because we really were living and commuting and working in the British society, yet having a little college community besides. I remember riding the ‘tube’ to work one day, reading the paper and I realized I was doing what every other British person of working age was doing We really got that feeling that we were in the real world.”
Gerry agrees that succeeding in another culture tested her boundaries and gave her a better sense of self. In addition, she says that she now has the confidence to apply for prestigious internships in her home county.
Lincer is a member of Crew Club, photographer for The Lafayette, and a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. She graduated from Paul D. Schreiber High School.
Gerry plays club field hockey and volunteers for Big Brothers, Big Sisters through Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Center. She graduated from the Pennington School.
