Working Together as a Community Health Team

Working together, as a group, throughout these past two weeks to aid family members in the community in Managua and work with nursing students from UPOLI have not only shown me the power of great teamwork and collaboration but also the important qualities of an effective community health team. Throughout this experience we have grown incredibly close to each other. We have grown into great friends, into stronger and more open individuals and into role models of what a community health team should look like. We have had to rely on each other during experiences that were at first new and outside of our comfort zones and have learned to incorporate diverse and insightful viewpoints into our schemas of what community health looks like. For example, as a group of students we have had to collaborate and rely on each other's experiences and knowledge in preparing for our community health education talks ("charlas") as they required a great deal of collaboration, teamwork and creativity when internet and resources were not readily available. In addition to brainstorming and sharing ideas on how to best present the community health topics (for example, stress to the elderly of the community), we also had to expand our communication techniques to overcome the language barrier. It was amazing to see how a language barrier can turn into a learning opportunity, and furthermore, how we as nursing students and community members are unified through our genuine desire to help others and learn from each other's experiences.

- Erin O’Connor, ABSN student

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