Nursing students practice clinical skills and share their faith during recent trips to Africa

Students from the Liberty University School of Nursing (LUSON) provided clinical care, taught proper health practices, and shared their faith during two separate trips to Kenya and Rwanda in March.

This year marked LUSON’s fourth trip to Kenya and the 10th to Rwanda. Each team included LUSON students and faculty; 24 members went to Kenya and 20 to Rwanda. By participating in either two-week trip, students received clinic credits toward their degrees after approval by the Virginia Board of Nursing. The trips were facilitated by LU Send.

In Rwanda, the team reconnected with the Mt. Shikunga Clinic, a ministry that Liberty has worked with over the years, and provided education on the importance of dental hygiene. Students also conducted clinics for the locals in various areas, including Gihiya Island. Nursing professor Stacy Taylor, who led the trip, said the island holds roughly 2,800 people and is one of the poorest areas in Rwanda.

“We try to support similar things every year, and it was really nice to go back and see the same people we’ve seen before and established relationships with,” Taylor said. “It was important for us to bring that to them so that they know oral hygiene isn’t just for their mouth; it’s great for all of their health. We also did a clinic on the island with blood pressure checks and hepatitis screenings in addition to the dental help.”

Senior Rachel McCabe said her time in Gihiya in particular allowed her to feel like she was making a difference in the lives of the locals who don’t have the privileges that those in the United States are afforded.

“It was really rewarding to help these people who were basically disconnected from the rest of society by teaching them dental hygiene and talking to them,” McCabe said. “It was special to see the impact you can have on a community that’s so rural and doesn’t have all the resources and education that it needs.”

Students also traveled to Kibogora Hospital in Kirambo, home to the only ICU beds in all of Rwanda, and interacted with local nurses and nursing students as they handled patients in the emergency room and ICU nursery and also observed cesarean sections. They later visited Kibogora Polytechnic’s nursing school and educated Level 1 nursing students on proper practices in communications, CPR, choking, Stop the Bleed training, and hand hygiene.

“The healthcare system in Rwanda has many different levels so we were trying to show our students every level to help them understand it more,” Taylor said. “We went from being community health workers all the way up to the ultimate hospital they have there. It really opens our students’ eyes to the differences in the hospitals and the healthcare systems in Rwanda (and elsewhere).”

LUSON’s trip to Kenya also allowed students to engage with nursing at multiple levels, from taking care of babies at the Happy Life Children’s Home in Roysambu to serving elderly patients at health clinics. The students held clinics at the Jesse Kay Hospital on Happy Life’s property, in the small town of Juja Farm, and at a church in Ruai. Thanks to the money raised by the team for the trip, all 1,000 of their clinic patients were able to receive free medications.

The Happy Life Children’s Home has a special Liberty connection, as the hospital on its property, Jesse Kay Hospital, was built in 2018 and named in honor of the son of former LUSON professor Cathy Kay.

According to LUSON professor and team leader Kat Rivera, Happy Life has saved over 700 babies and currently cares for roughly 74 children under the age of 3-and-a-half.

“Happy Life is an orphanage that started 15 years ago and they rescue babies who have literally been thrown away, newborns mostly,” Rivera said. “We were sleeping above the hospital and next door to Happy Life, so the students were living with the babies and doing childcare, midnight feedings, 5 a.m. feedings, and caring for them as well as giving medical care.”

The students got to help inside Jesse Kay Hospital itself, assisting with emergency cesarean sections, in the operating room, and with in-patient care.

As a junior at LUSON interested in pediatric and ER care, Dawson Brande said this experience helped reassure him and his peers of their skills as nurses and gave them a glimpse of their future careers.

“I want to do pediatric nursing and we did a lot of work on the trip with kids, so I was so thankful and it ended up being perfect for me,” Brande said. “The first day of the clinic we sort of didn’t realize how much we knew until we went into that situation, and then when we started to interact with the patients, we saw just how much we did know and felt confident in that.”

While helping with the clinics during both trips, Liberty students had the opportunity to speak about their faith with their patients, many of whom were already believers, and minister to those who did not yet know the Lord. Rivera said that two students were each able to lead a patient to Christ during the clinics in Kenya.

“The country of Kenya is quite Christian and they’re very open to hearing the Gospel,” Rivera said. “As they waited for their prescriptions at the little pharmacy we had set up, students would pray with the patients and they would tell them about Jesus Christ. Often the people they were witnessing to were actually praying for the students, and it was a wonderful opportunity for cultural exchange and community in Christ.”

One of the key experiences for the Rwanda team outside the clinical setting was visiting the Rwanda Genocide Museum and one of the main memorials, a tradition that past teams have also done to help the students understand the incredible tragedy that occurred 27 years ago. Taylor said the students learned more about their faith from the people of Rwanda.

“Because of the genocide, many people did turn to Christianity, and the students got a lesson in forgiveness and recovery from the Rwandan people,” Taylor said. “They go to church with the family of someone who may have killed one of their own family members in the genocide. To see how well the country has come together and forgiven one another through their Christian values, I think it actually helps our students to realize that we need to learn to forgive.”

She said one of the potential outcomes of these trips is for students to be inspired and encouraged to look into mission work in some form in the future.

“Our hope is that we can show them what these different opportunities are and open their hearts for missions work, not necessarily long-term missions — even though some are interested in that — but opening their eyes to making connections with the people there and to possibly go back and serve,” Taylor said.

Kendall Tomlinson, currently in her junior year, said the trip to Rwanda has fueled her desires to work in global healthcare.

“I was interested in this trip because I’m really interested in doing global missions in the future with my career in nursing, and this trip allowed us to do something like that through the clinicals,” Tomlinson said. “We were able to help meet people’s physical needs, but that also created an avenue for us to talk to them about Jesus.”