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So, how did you spend your summer vacation?

While most of us were taking advantage of some much-needed summertime downtime — puttering in the garden or lazing at the lake — a group of stalwart students and faculty from the UMKC Schools of Nursing and Pharmacy packed their bags and headed south. Not to bask on the beaches of Florida or Acapulco, though; they headed a bit farther south to pursue a more academic and philanthropic diversion.

Each summer since 2004, Thad Wilson, associate professor and associate dean of the School of Nursing, has led a group of students and faculty to the country of Honduras. For two weeks, they team up with local health care workers in both rural and urban settings to provide care to some of the country’s most needy and most neglected citizens.

While he doesn’t refer to the trip as a “mission,” it represents a commitment and a passion that was born in Wilson early in his nursing career.

“After finishing my nursing undergrad, I spent a couple of years in the late 1970s running a clinic there,” Wilson said. “During that time, I really came to love the Honduran people and the culture and saw, up close, the need for basic health care, especially in rural areas of the country.”

After returning to the U.S. and beginning his graduate studies, he made it a frequent summer “vacation” to make the trip to Honduras to help out in local clinics and hospitals. He soon began recruiting friends and colleagues to join him and, eventually, students began asking if they could go along. It wasn’t long before so many students were expressing interest that Wilson worked with colleagues at the School of Nursing to develop a curriculum of coursework based on the trip.

“For the eight nursing students and five pharmacy students who made the trip this year, the experience is not just an opportunity to translate what they have learned in the classroom into hands-on, real-world practice, but an opportunity to earn a couple of credit hours as well,” Wilson said.

Faculty members who joined Wilson this year included Rebecca Deason, Kristin Lee and Obie Austin from the UMKC School of Nursing, and Crystal Obering from the School of Pharmacy. For them, all of whom also donate significant amounts of their time and skills to local causes throughout the year, the trip offers an opportunity to teach the type of lesson that can never be taught in the classroom.

“The Honduras trip was a monumental experience for all the students that traveled with the group,” Obering said. “Each student came back to the States with a fresh look at what they can accomplish with their careers in nursing and pharmacy.”

During the first week of the trip, the group traveled to the Honduran countryside, setting up temporary clinics in rural areas where local people lined up en masse to be treated for everything from arthritis to infections and worms. For many of the people they treated, health care services are infrequently provided in their village or require hours of travel.

“It’s a stark reminder that, for all the flaws and shortcomings of the U.S. health care system, there are people and places in the world where the opportunities for even the most basic medical attention is all but nonexistent,” Wilson said.

It was on to San Pedro Sula for the second week, where the group worked in one of the city’s local hospitals, mostly helping out in the emergency room, where the majority of the poor urban population comes for medical care. Some of the hardest and most enduring lessons the students learn, Wilson says, is in this setting.

“They get a chance to see what dedicated people can do in a hospital with limited resources,” he said. “They learn that health care does not always require a ton of money, but it does require good knowledge, good science and caring.”

They also learn that limited resources often means making tough choices. Wilson tells of a young woman who came into the emergency room suffering from a massive overdose.

“They pumped her stomach and put her in a corner of the ER. There was nothing else we could do for her and she died in that corner,” he said. “There were other people with serious injuries that we could treat and who might have died waiting. That’s the reality of health care in too many places throughout the world. You can’t learn about making those kinds of decisions in the classroom.”

As an educator, Wilson says the most rewarding aspect of the experience is what he refers to as the “Aha! moments” for the students.

“I think that every student we’ve ever taken has had those moments,” Wilson said. “Those moments treating a patient or comforting a sick child when something clicks and they really understand why they chose a career in health care. It is definitely a life-changing experience for a lot of them.”

Some pictures of the trip can be found at http://nursing.umkc.edu/photogallery2.cfm?Gallery_ID=48

A video from the trip is available at http://www.umkc.edu/ia/its/media/00047.asx