458 ■ III: ROLE FUNCTIONS OF DOCTORAL ADVANCED NURSING PRACTICE
in several languages including Spanish, German, Italian, French, Arabic, and English,
to name a few. Certain visiting groups from various countries are announced as attend-
ees of the Papal Audience, and our group is announced as “pilgrims from Duquesne
University in Pennsylvania.” This is one of the many experiences that call attention to
the impact of religion on the Italian culture.
Because one of the objectives of the course is for students to learn and write about
health care environments outside of their usual frame of reference, many of the planned
activities focus on health and health care contexts within the Roman culture. Examples
of such activities include a private tour of the National Museum of Medical Art at the
Santo Spirito Hospital with the former Director of the Red Cross in Italy, tours of private
hospitals and public hospitals, such as the Salvator Mundi International Hospital and
the San Giovanni Calibita Hospital on Tiber Island. During these experiences, students
meet with physicians, nurses and other hospital personnel to learn about each hospital’s
specialty areas and common practices relative to whether the facility is part of the pri-
vate or public hospital system. Students conduct observational fieldwork and have the
opportunity to ask questions based on their individual area of interest. In 2015, students
visited the Lazzaro Spallenzani Hospital, specializing in infectious disease. This facility
was a public hospital until 1996 when the Ministry of Health declared it an autonomous
institution of recovery and research. Lazzaro Spallenzani Hospital was the facility that
took care of the two patients with Ebola in Italy, both of whom were cured there in 2015.
An activity that has become a particularly meaningful tradition each year is a
group dinner at the Trattoria degli Amici (Trattoria of Friends). This restaurant, which
collaborates with the Comunità di Sant’Egidio, employs individuals with disabilities
who are accompanied by medical professionals and adult volunteers. The restaurant
owners and managers believe that friendships are made this way, through understand-
ing and working together side by side. Because of this idea, they have created classes
for individuals with disabilities on how to work in restaurants and have sponsored
conventions with theme areas about successful employment of workers with mental
and physical disabilities. After the dinner, students have the option of participating in
a prayer service conducted each night by the Comunità di Sant’Egidio (Community of
Sant’Egidio). This service is led by lay people and often focuses on praying about cur-
rent global issues such as peace in war- torn countries like Syria. Following the service,
students meet with a leader in the lay community to discuss the community- service
initiatives of the Sant’ Egidio community.
Student learning outcomes of this study- abroad experience have been incredibly
meaningful from both a personal and scholarly perspective. One hundred and fifteen
students have participated in the Rome study- abroad component of the course, and
numerous students have described how the trip impacted, and even changed, their
lives. Many students have described the study- abroad experience as life changing and
transformational. They have described how the experience has assisted in helping them
feel part of the global nature of nursing. Many have described a new- found empathy
for working with immigrant and refugees in the United States. From a scholarly per-
spective, the major writing assignment for the course has been completed as a publish-
able manuscript by several groups of students, and three groups have published papers
about their experience in peer- reviewed journals (Easterby et al., 2012; Gregg et al.,
2013; Montenery, Jones, Perry, Ross, & Zoucha, 2013). Additional groups of students are
planning to submit their manuscripts for publication. The study- abroad experience in
Rome helps students to transfer these unique experiences to patients of diverse cultures
when organizing and providing care within the U.S. health care system. Students who
have engaged in this experiential learning in Rome reported that they were clearly able
to recognize the importance of one’s culture on health and well- being.