Hello from Bethany

Hi all!

My name is Bethany and I am one of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) graduate students who will be traveling to Washington DC in a couple weeks to immerse ourselves in the culture of homelessness. I feel extremely blessed to have this opportunity to learn and grow both professionally and personally. I have always had a passion for working with those who are in some way disadvantaged and look forward to gaining a better understanding for the homeless population in DC.

A little about myself: I am married and have two daughters; Bridget will be 14 in 3 days, and Cassie will be 10 later this month. My husband James and I have been super busy trying to keep up with the girls' activities and sports. I hate to say it, but I'm almost glad basketball season is almost over. We are also trying to get some work done around the house before my husband goes back to work in the spring. Needless to say, I never have a dull moment!

I graduated from the UWEC nursing program in December 2008. Since then I have been working as a public health nurse at our local health department. I absolutely love the work I do there. I truly feel I make a difference in the lives of the mothers, children, and families I work with, and that's a great feeling. I decided to continue on right away with graduate school. I am in the family nurse practitioner track at UWEC and expect to graduate in May 2011. I'm anxiously awaiting the day I graduate! Time has become a rare commodity for me and I've become very appreciative of every quality minute I get to spend with my family.

I've spent my entire life living within an hour of the small midwest town my family and I have settled into. As many of our clinical group members, I have had little experience working with a diverse population. In the summer of 2007 I was able to spend 10 days in Rosebud, SD during my nursing clinical working with the Native Americans on the reservation. Then in the summer of 2008 I had another great opportunity to travel to Alaska with another clinical group to work in the pediatric unit at the Alaska Native Medical Center. I learned so much from both of these experiences. I am very excited to be traveling to Washinton DC for this clinical immersion. I'm sure the insights and knowledge I will gain around homelessness will be beneficial in both my professional and personal life.

Well that's all I have for now. I hope you all enjoy experiencing this immersion with us through this blog. Please feel free to ask questions as we prepare for the trip, or let us know if there is anything you'd like to hear about specifically.

excitement..

Hi all! My name is Kelly Hayes and I am currently in the graduate nursing program to become a Family Health Nurse Practitioner. I am excited about our upcoming immersion trip to D.C.! I feel lucky to have this opportunity to learn and better understand the homeless population. I will fill you in about myself..

I grew up in a small southern Minnesota town of 20,000. I graduated from the UW-Madison School of Nursing in 2007 and worked for two years as a RN in a Coronary Care Unit at Gundersen Lutheran hospital in La Crosse, WI. I recently moved to the twin cities area and am now working at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in an Intermediate Care Unit.

In January of 2007 I traveled to Maseno, Kenya for a medical missions trip. I spent a month there working with patients in the hospital, doing outreach clinics with people who had HIV/AIDS, and working with an orphan feeding program and clinic. This was a life-changing experience as you can imagine and I am forever changed because of it. Since this experience I realized I wanted to pursue further education in hopes of becoming a nurse practitioner and to work with people of lower socioeconomic standing. I truly have a passion for these people, but have minimal experience. I hope to gain knowledge about what these homeless women of D.C. are experiencing. I want to fully embrace this experience and take every opportunity to grow as a person!

Hi Everyone! I posted some information about me under my name "Erin" but will share with all of you a little bit more. I grew up in a smaller town of about 10,000 people in Mound, MN. I graduated from high school in 2001 with a graduating class size of about 180, so fair enough to say I knew pretty much everyone in my class. I attended the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN with a major in Nursing. There is no specific event that prompted me to become a nurse but I knew that I loved to care for others. A few days after graduating College, I traveled to Leipzig, Germany through an exhchange program with the College. This was a ton of fun. We spent time living and learning at the Medical Institue of the University of Leipzig. I traveled with two other health science students and my chemistry professor. We were able to shadow health science students in Germany through their clinicals and also in other hospitals and clinics within the city. In return these students would travel to our college to experience our culture. It was a great opportunity for me to venture out and about!

Although Germany was a blast, this immersion experience in Washington D.C. will be as memorable if not more because we will be directly interacting with a population in need. I am so excited to have the opportunity to venture to Washington D.C to work with the homeless population. We will be staying at the Steinbruck Center and will also be involved in many activities that they have kindly coordinated with our instructor Lee Ellen. This is such a great way to see first hand the struggles that this population deals with. However, I am already captivated by the strength that this population holds as well. I will keep you all posted as our immersion experience draws near!!!!

Thanks, Erin : )

I think I posted this post under a comment on Stacie's, whoops! Still getting used to blogging! haha

Hello from Angelique

Hi Everyone!

My name is Angelique and I am one of the lucky members of this clinical immersion experience that will be traveling to Washington, DC in just a couple of weeks! I am so thrilled to be involved in this experience. Similar to most (if not all) of the other clinical group members, I have also lived in small town, USA my entire life. While I absolutely love traveling and have been to a number of larger cities before, I have never experienced a city in the manner we will be doing with Washington. When you travel as a vacationer/tourist, you tend to turn a blind eye to the negative and sad aspects of your surroundings. I am looking forward to taking in a city from a different perspective, as well as hopefully learning more about a population I have had little contact with up to this point. It seems like an especially important time to become more familiar with the homeless population as that, with the current economic situation in our country and in the world, we're all seeing everyday how fragile our "middle class" status can be. The longer the recession drags on and the more people you know who have gotten laid off/downsized/hours cut back/etc, it makes it a little more real to you that just a little bad luck or bad timing could be enough to put any one of us into a dire situation. The homeless aren't really different from any of us except that they've experienced that bad luck or bad timing, while we're just hoping it doesn't invade our lives.

As far as a little more about me: I graduated from UW-Oshkosh with my undergraduate nursing degree in December 2005, and have primarily focused my practice on Cardiology. I moved to the greater Eau Claire area in August of 2006 (right after my hubby and I got married) and I have to say, I really do love it in this part of the state. In addition to working full-time on a cardiac step down unit, I am also currently enrolled full-time in the Family Nurse Practitioner program at UW-Eau Claire, and am planning to graduate with my master's in May 2011 if all goes as planned (fingers crossed!). After that? I guess we'll see what comes along...

That's me in a nutshell. Thanks for reading our blog!

I have lived in the mid west my entire life. I grew up in a small town, graduated from high school with 68 students, and have lead a pretty sheltered life when it comes to interacting with other cultures. I have been a nurse for 10 years, working in many different areas of nursing. Currently I teach at a Technical College part-time and manage a home care company part-time. Since graduating from a ADA program in 2001, I have been going to school ever since. There is always something new in nursing to learn and there are many, many opportunities with in health care that nurses are needed in.

I am so grateful to be able to be a part of this immersion experience into the homeless population within Washington, D.C. I hope to gain more of an in depth understanding of the African American women and homelessness. We will be having many opportunities, while staying at the Steinbruck Center, to engage ourselves in many programs offered to the women and other homeless populations. One can only get so much information from reading books/articles, listening to others experience or watching films that actual immersion of ones self into to the population is the best experience one can have at gathering their own understanding.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We are a group of six graduate nursing students from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire who are planning on traveling to Washington D.C. in March to immerse ourselves in the homeless population of D.C. This trip is part of a domestic intercultural immersion grant and will be guided by our instructor, Lee-Ellen Kirkhorn for our family nursing class (clinical portion).

We will be working (and staying!) at the Steinbruck Center for Urban Studies which is a guest hostel of the Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington D.C. We will be providing care at several agencies serving the homeless including Unity Healthcare for the Homeless, Martha's Table, Capital Area Foodbank, Thrive DC, and the N Street Village, diverse shelters and services for homeless women managed by the church. We are also planning to work closely with education and advocacy for the women of N Street Village by conducting a blood pressure clinic and performing health education about obesity and diabetes.

Here is the link for more information: http://www.lutherplace.org/steinbruckcenter/index.html

We are currently collecting donations for items needed in D.C.: reusable bags, notebooks, journals, and tablecloths (no cloth). If you are reading this and would like to donate, please contact us via our blog or email: hayeskel@uwec.edu And a big thank you to those who have donated already! We will have a photo of our donated items coming soon...

We have many people to thank for this great opportunity. We would like to thank our instructor, Lee-Ellen, as she applied for and received the grant that will fund this immersion. We also would like to thank Jodi Thesing-Ritter, the Associate Dean of Students, who conceptualized the idea of funding domestic intercultural immersion projects. Our UW-Eau Claire Foundation who raised the funds for these grants, and the office of Interim Associate Vice Chancellor, Dr. Susan Turell who helped with staffing and facilitation. Our instructor has also received great support from our department chair, Dr Rose Jadack, and from our dean, Dr. Mary Zwygart-Stauffacher.

We will continue to post blogs from each of the students as the immersion nears closer. We have many feelings of excitement, fear, and curiosity. And again, welcome to our blog. Enjoy!