British Museum, Natural History Museum , Journal #3

We are almost officially a week into our trip and not only have we learned a whole lot we have SEEN a ton. ( as I'm sure you can tell by my pictures on my facebook :) )
Things have been busy and crazy. Today we went to the British Museum and the Natural history museum and then platform 9 3/4 and the to shakespeares head again which was fun.

We got to see dinosaurs, mammals and my favorite part the human biology! it went through pretty much tracing a cell through the body and going though the development of live and things like that and talking about memory and logic and illusions and it was really awesome. I think they should just take all the nursing students though there because it gives you a pretty good basis of everything you need to know and of course they are pretty straight forward about most things hah

Story of the day:
Coming home on the tube melissa was very sleepy and was leaning toward me kinda taking a nap on the way back to the flat . i noticed that the chap next to her had something on bis arm that looked to me a lot like psoriasis . i made a few comments to jackie across the row, mouthing of course , I would never say something rude about someone that would be awful. On the way out of the tube station jackie asks me out loud what she thinks it was since the chap did not get off at out stop. I told her it looked like psoriasis.but that i did not know. melissa freaked out because apparently she did not notice the rash all over the guys arm next to her and was only leaning next to me because she was tired... now she is freaking out and thinks she is going to get psoriasis












Today we went to the British museum. As we toured around through the mummies of ancient Egypt and the pottery of Greece we stumbled upon a room that was large and contained not only statues but books behind glass throughout a long straight room. We walked through and glanced at the statues till we came upon a woman holding a box of items which you were allowed to touch. One of these items was the Hindu god Krishna. Melissa went to hold it and the woman began to tell us about the small bronze statue. While I was interested in the statue I had a very difficult time concentrating on it because of the fact that she had very crooked, almost rotten looking teeth. We politely listened, nodded and moved on and as soon as we were out of ear shot had a conversation about whether or not it was a regular thing here in London to have teeth like that.


Later we went to the Natural History Museum. While we were there we toured through the exhibit where they talked through the development of human cells and how humans were formed and how babies needed to be taken care of and so on and so forth. The exhibit also went on to talk about nerves and muscles and the joints in the body and how the body worked together to make everything work in unison. It discussed things from puberty to memory, homeostasis to fetal development. In the exhibit about memory there was a station you could play a game about how much you could remember when put under stress in a crime scene situation. In the end the chap with the knife has awful teeth some of which are missing, another sign that its more normal than not that people don’t have just the best teeth here in London


The entire exhibit was hands on and very interactive. There were levers to pull, buttons to push, and movies to watch to help you to learn about the human body. They taught you how it worked and how to take care of it. The explained how your memory worked and how it could be affected in times of stress. Every aspect of the body seemed to be covered except for teeth.


I was very interested when I realized the connection here. I had been so amazed by the amount of hands on experience at this museum and how wonderful it was at teaching these people about the cells and the nervous system and how their body worked and yet in the end it never discussed their teeth, oral hygiene, or really any hygiene for that matter. As a small group we discussed it later on and talked about how for a country that is so focused on fashion and how they look , you would think that they would be more concerned about their teeth and how straight they were and how taken care of they were but surprisingly enough they aren’t. I don’t know if it is because of a lack of information or a lack of motivation but there is some reason why Americans are so intent on having wonderful straight smiles and British people don’t care


As nurses we need to take into these considerations and learn how our patients are feeling and relate to them. We need to be there for our patients and care for them to the best of our abilities because that is what we are there for as nurses. I personally did not become a nurse to empty bedpans. I did it for the relationships that I plan on building with my patients. Without knowing the cultural differences and religious differences between our patients we will never be able to give our patients the best possible care, so with that said we as nurses need to look into the things that are affecting our patients and see what it is that we can do as their caregiver to help them in the way that is most beneficial to them.