LONDON CALLING

Twenty-two students traveled to England May 16-July 2 with course instructors Stephen E. Lammers, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of Religious Studies, and Alan W. Childs, professor of psychology. They worked four days each week as interns in British healthcare institutions and met in class the fifth day to discuss their experiences.

Siobhan Pattwell ’06 shadowed a pediatric oncologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital during her internship.

“It was one of the best things I’ve ever done,” says the neuroscience major. She also collaborated with British audiologist Wendy Albuquerque on research into the number of children who lose their hearing as a result of chemotherapy.

“We found that a lot of hospitals aren’t doing a very good job of monitoring hearing loss. We took our report to a conference in Vienna, and there were pediatric oncologists there from all over the world,” Pattwell says.

“I had direct relationships with people in the system that I was learning about in class,” says Peter Winsky ’07, a government and law major. “To understand how the English live and function under a system completely different from ours, it really helped to be able to talk with a coworker who has lived it about his experiences and feelings on the benefits a newborn receives.”

In his internship at the Association of Medical Research Charities, Winsky gathered data from universities that conduct medical research on how they spend money given by charitable organizations and track the expenditures. Other students interned at dental clinics, hospitals, physical therapy centers, schools, veterinary clinics, and other organizations.

Childs and Lammers say it is immensely rewarding to watch students come to understand and appreciate the complexities of healthcare delivery.

“It will make them better practitioners, if that’s the direction they go, but also better consumers, even if they have nothing further to do with health care,” Childs says. “It helps them understand how the political and economic systems work in their own culture.”