Case Study: My Interest To Global Health

My Interest to Global Health

Personal Background

As far as I can remember, I always wanted to become a nurse because of my personal and family life circumstances. I was born in a very small country, Bhutan. When I was a child, my family was forced to leave the country because of an ethnic cleansing policy of repressive Bhutanese government. I grew up in a refugee camp for 18 years where food, healthcare, sanitation, privacy, school, and others were very limited. Most of the people in the camp including children were victims of rape, torture, imprisonment, and mental illness (especially, PTSD). All the victims and other mentally ill people were deprived of medical facilities in the refugee camps. I myself was also deprived to get medical services

I was very inspired by her story about her journey as a nurse in US and in Ghana, a West African Country. In her story, she mentioned how language barrier and low health literacy would be very challenging on effective treatment with the immigrant populations in the U.S. She also discussed the conditions of the hospital in Ghana, especially mental health wards that were very poorly facilitated. For example, patients were forced to use trenches due to lack of latrines (toilets) that run just below the wards (Harlan, 2015, p.85). According to the Kim, some challenges inside of the hospitals are poor sanitation; close sleeping areas, high census of patients, high prevalence of malaria from harmful mosquitoes, and no isolation rooms for active TB patients. In addition, lack of resources, few psychiatric doctors, few healthcare workers, high stigma on mental illness, lack of advocacy to patient, high numbers of patients seen by Psychiatrist in less time, and lack of therapeutic relationships are some of challenges of the hospital. These kinds of devastating problems and challenges often occur in most developing or underdeveloped countries around the