School lends space to practical nursing students

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Shaping caregivers from the community for the community is the goal of a pilot nursing program in Hobbema.

Ermineskin Cree Nation, along with Hobbema Indian Health Services and Norquest College, have joined in a partnership to provide the Aboriginal Practical Nurses program to the residents of Hobbema. Fourteen Ermineskin band members are participating.

"We are a team of good health workers who know what our people need, what all people need," said student JoAnn Buffalo.

With a range of ages from 23 to 63 there is a strong presence of heritage and culture within the classroom at Ermineskin Junior/Senior High School.

"Everyone has the sense of helping your fellow man," said Buffalo. "And even more so when you're a caregiver."

Instructor Lisa Bourque, together with Evelyn Lysak, program co-ordinator for Norquest College, developed four core modules for the program.

"We took the basic information that fills the base program, and then individualized it for the Aboriginal people," said Bourque.

"The unique part of this program is how much the students bring into the classroom," said Bourque.

Students are given the opportunity to discuss their individual perspectives on how roles of Aboriginal people have changed over the years.

Bourque explained that many of them have different levels of experience in care-giving, and by sharing these experiences they are able to grow as people and nurses.

Everyone in the course already possesses the skills needed to be good caregivers. This course just gives them the academic theory behind it,

"Education has always been the key," said Bourque. "Aboriginal people are inherently caregivers and we're just strengthening that."

Modules for the courses include the history, spirituality, traditional lifestyles and health and wellness focus of Aboriginal people.

"We tried to see what Aboriginal content the people of the community wanted to see in the program," stated Bourque.

Bourque spent close to six months developing the modules, which put an additional eight weeks on the length of the program. In other nursing programs offered by the institution, students only have to study a base program, but at the school in Ermineskin students wanted to spend extra time individualizing their program to suit their community.

In the history module students will learn how the implementation of the Indian Act and subsequent legislation has fragmented Aboriginal people into federally defined categories of status, non-status and Métis, with different and often ill-defined rights. They will learn how Aboriginal people are overcoming the assimilationist policies of successive governments that have affected their health and well being from European contact up to today.

"People need to know where they came from; it sets their journey in life," said Bourque.

Elders are invited to share wisdom and experiences as a teaching tool for the students.

Elders also played an important role in developing the spirituality module, said Bourque.

"The Elders really thought that it was important to have this as part of the program," stated Bourque.

In the traditional lifestyles module students are taught about the traditional roles that men, women and children had in their culture.

Students attended a pre-nursing program offered by Maskwachees Cultural College.

They also upgraded their high school marks in sciences, mathematics 30 and English 30.

While attending the Aboriginal Practical Nurses program, students must continue to achieve a 70 per cent average in order to pass.

Once they have passed the course they will write a Canadian licensing exam, which enables them to practise anywhere in Canada.

But many of the 14-member graduating class of 2002 expect they will be hired by the Hobbema Indian Health Board.