Each year, Vol nurses have the chance to travel to Africa to help provide much-needed health care in remote areas of Kenya, thanks to an international program that carries on the work started by a donor during her career.
College of Nursing faculty and students have made multiple trips to the WAKA Medical Training Institute and Hospital in Nyeri, Kenya, where they work alongside local health care providers to treat patients for chronic conditions and everyday illnesses. College of Nursing faculty also have delivered lectures and provided hands-on learning for Kenyan nurses and students.
Those who have made the trip say they get as much as they give.
“All of the students have said visiting Kenya was a life-changing event for them,” said April Bryant, a clinical assistant professor who traveled with students in July 2023 and January 2024. “They knew that health disparities and other disparities existed in the world, but they had never seen it with their own eyes. They felt humility and were humbled by the experience.
“They were able to go out on their own, without the safety and comfort of home and stand on their own two feet—and make a real change in the community.”
Building a partnership
Planning for the Kenya project began nearly a decade ago, when Poppy Buchanan, a longtime public health nurse, first approached College of Nursing Dean Victoria Niederhauser about the possibility.
During her career, Buchanan helped a Kenyan nurse-midwife build the WAKA compound, which now includes a 100-student school, a maternity hospital, a clinic for mothers and children, and student housing. Recognizing that she was getting older, Buchanan proposed that the college continue her work in Kenya.
Initially, Niederhauser said, it wasn’t safe to send students or faculty to Kenya. But she and Buchanan continued talking, and Buchanan ended up helping the college with two other projects—building a kiosk to provide clean drinking water for the people of Clay County, Kentucky, and starting the Center for Nursing Practice, which promotes healthy communities through activities that improve access to nursing care.
“Poppy hung in there with us,” Niederhauser said. In 2019, Nan Gaylord, recently retired associate dean for practice and global affairs; Susan Hébert, assistant dean of simulation; and Virginia Fowler, coordinator of the Center for Nursing Practice, traveled to Kenya to lay the groundwork for student trips.
After a delay because of the pandemic, Gaylord and Hébert, accompanied by their husbands, returned to Kenya in May 2023 to renovate a WAKA building into a dormitory for UT students.
Life-changing adventure
In July 2023, Hébert and Bryant took four seniors to Kenya. In January, they returned with six juniors and two seniors.
During their stay in Kenya, UT students spent several days doing clinical rotations with the WAKA students at the hospital in Nyeri.
“They get to know each other as people and nurses,” Hébert said.
Bryant said UT students saw that Kenyan hospitals, sometimes small and very overcrowded, operate very differently than those in the United States. There is no such thing as Medicaid or TennCare. Patients who can’t pay for their care may be detained or jailed.
“And patients sometimes have to share beds,” Bryant said.
UT nursing students also helped with nurse-led free clinics in rural villages.
“If we weren’t there, these people would not have received the care, the medication, or the education,” said Madison Downs, who helped dispense medications at one of the clinics in January.
Seeing the way people lived in some of the poorest areas, “I realized how much I’ve taken for granted in life,” said Downs, a native of St. Louis who graduated in May and is now working in a cardiovascular ICU in a hospital in Washington, DC.
Norah Vinopal, a junior from Arlington Heights, Illinois, also went on the January trip.
She enjoyed getting to know the Kenyan nursing students, and she was impressed with their resourcefulness amid the area’s lack of resources. She was also humbled by how appreciative patients were for the care they received.
“The experience put lots of things in perspective for me,” she said. “It’s going to help me be a better nurse one day.”
During the group’s time in Kenya, Bryant lectured on a variety of general health topics and Hebert taught Helping Babies Breathe, a best-practices infant resuscitation simulated learning program developed for resource-poor areas. About 200 nurses from 19 care facilities in the Nyeri area practiced infant resuscitation techniques using manikins.
Reaping the benefits
Faculty plan to lead a student trip to Kenya each January.
“The trips allow students to see some of the things they learn didactically in the real world,” Bryant said. They see how much a person’s health is influenced by their environment, and they see how much impact nurses can have on individuals and communities.
Vol nurses come home knowing they can make a difference in people’s lives—and that’s a lesson they’ll carry into the future. “The people of Kenya are some of the most welcoming, kind, generous people I’ve ever met,” Bryant said. “We can all learn something from the people of Kenya.”
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CONTACT:
Kara Clark (865-974-9498, kmclark2@utk.edu)