Excursion Week in Barcelona University Hospital Clinic

Minna Laiti, Sanna Kostamo, Johanna Pohjanoksa, Hanna Muurinen, Sunna Rannikko, Niina Vesa

The Barcelona University Hospital Clinic was created in 1906. The hospital consists of several buildings. In the middle is a medical faculty building. The idea is that science is built around practice. The complex is tertiary hospital for local, national and international patients. The organization model have specialized care, primary care, private care, medical education and research.

The planning of this excursion started early in the spring 2015. In October we got few different themes from Barcelona, from which we made literature reviews and after that the PowerPoint presentation for the Barcelona University Hospital Clinic’s professionals. At this time we didn’t know yet what kind of target population are there listening our presentations. The themes of the presentations were “Evaluation of the Nurse Manager Competence, Elderly Care with Dementia on Hospital Admission and Patient Experience Applied on Clinical Care” (we did presentations as a pair work). At the first day in Hospital Clinic we all made our presentations and we all managed well!

Four of us lived in an old apartment, among the local people and two of us stayed in a hotel. We all were near at the University Hospital, and there were also a metro station and a bus stop near, so the location was great! Overall the public transportation was very flexible in Barcelona, and metro was really easy to use.

During the week we were able to familiarize with different specialities of Spanish nursing care. We were mainly placed to the wards based on our previous work history. We became familiar with psychiatric, intermedicine, determatology, surgery, oncology, hematology, and neuroscience nursing. The whole week was interesting even if they all staff didn’t actually understand that we are not nurse students. After we started to say that in Finland we are learning nursing management and leadership, they understood we are already graduated nurses, a public health nurse or a radiographer.

On our leisure time we got to know local attractions and just enjoyed Barcelona’s atmosphere. We visited an old hospital Sant Paul, Sagrada Família, Antonio Gaudi’s other architectural works, and many other famous places. Our bags filled up from shopping and we soaked up the marvelous sun which shined almost every day. Couple of us also went to swim in the sea, water was not cold at all.

One special feature in Spanish health care system is home nurses, who visit in patients’ homes. They visit regularly in patients’ home for example when they have oral cytostatic treatments, and this feature makes patients able to stay home more, and the amount of inpatients are smaller. Overall Finnish and Spanish health care have many similarities, but of course there are always some differences in nursing practices.

The Spanish culture was quite social when comparing to Finnish one, but all people were very friendly and kind. Even though all Spanish people couldn’t speak so much English, it was not a problem and with English language we all managed well!