Pre-Health Students Get to Act as Doctors

for a Week in Managua, Nicaragua

October 29, 2019
Cedar City, Utah

Rural Health Scholars (RHS) is a program in Southern Utah that focuses on getting
undergraduate students into the graduate healthcare program of their choosing. RHS has
offices on three campuses in Utah, including Southern Utah University, Dixie State University,
and Snow College. To give their students a headstart on getting into healthcare, they offer
cultural immersion trips 3-4 times a year to various developing nations for students to get
hands-on primary healthcare experience in a foreign and impoverished country. In March of
2018, RHS sent 18 students from all three campuses to Managua, Nicaragua where they would
get to try their hand at being a physician and test their knowledge of human biology, anatomy,
physiology, and pathology.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, these 18 students had lessons on medical Spanish, some
very brief training on how to spot and diagnose certain diseases, and what to expect while in
country. After multiple vaccinations and all documentation was in order, they packed up their
scrubs, donations, and bug spray and boarded a flight from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Managua,
Nicaragua.

The following week consisted of a “medical school crash course” and four clinic days. Clinics
were set up in old houses/churches in different neighborhoods along the west coast of the
country, in places where the people did not have access to healthcare or medications. Each
day, these 18 students set up their own mini-offices of five chairs in a circle, and treated patients
as a team under the supervision of 3 Nicaraguan physicians and an interpreter. From taking
vital signs, patient/family history, performing medical examinations, making diagnoses, and
prescribing medications, these undergraduate students got to experience what it’s really like to
be a primary healthcare provider.

One of these lucky students, McCall Tingey, participated in the trip as part of her EDGE project
for Southern Utah University. The EDGE program stands for Education Designed to Give
Experience, and it challenges all students who graduate from SUU to design and execute their
own 40-hour minimum project. McCall decided to go through the Global engagement track
which led her to doing 50 hours of medical service in Nicaragua on this trip. ###

Contact Information
McCall Tingey 801-682-3461 mtingey8@gmail.com
48 N College Way, Cedar City, UT 84720
Twitter: @McCallTingey Instagram: mccall_tingey