Student nurse 'sees Jesus' on Nicaragua mission trip
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Student nurse has served in Florida, Texas and Nicaragua on Lipscomb mission trips
Nhan Dinh traveled half-way around the globe just to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
The 21-year-old senior from Vietnam is completing her degree in nursing at Lipscomb, in hopes of becoming an acute care nurse practitioner, much like her mother who is a registered nurse in her homeland.
But unlike her mother, Dinh’s road to nursing took her through Clarksville, Tennessee; to Smyrna, Tennessee; and finally to Lipscomb, through which she has had the opportunity to provide health care to hundreds of patients in Destin, Florida; Fort Worth, Texas; and most recently, Nicaragua; on a total of four mission trips through the university.
One of the 82 members of nursing's Class of 2016, Dinh has distinguished herself by earning prestigious summer internships at Vanderbilt University and the Hope Medical Clinic in Destin, by spearheading the establishment of a nursing honor society on campus; and working on a peer mentoring program to help her classmates prepare for the NCLEX licensing exam.
At the age of 16, Dinh came to America as an exchange student and was hosted by an American family in Clarksville. She learned about Lipscomb through her “American family,” several of whom had graduated from Lipscomb. Her “American aunt,” Stephanie Nipper (’05), even graduated from Lipscomb’s nursing program, Dinh said.
Even so, she chose to attend Motlow State Community College in Smyrna upon graduation from Rossview High School. She soon determined that Motlow was not the place for her and came to Lipscomb, where she has flourished in her nursing studies.
Like most mothers, Dinh’s mother, now a scrub room nurse, wanted her daughter to be a doctor or an engineer. But Dinh says she wanted to pick a career she was sure to love: one that would provide economic security, personal meaning and wouldn’t result in a change of majors, costing more money and time. She decided nursing was for her.
“When I was little, I wanted to get a job and make a good living,” she said, chuckling at herself. “But now, I want a good job, but I also want to serve people and help my neighbors. Whatever I do, I want to glorify God.”
She attributes much of that change in attitude to the mission trips and service work she has done through the Lipscomb nursing program. “Definitely the Nicaragua trip over winter break made me a more well-rounded person,” she said.
Dinh went on the Nicaragua trip with a group of pre-med majors and Lipscomb’s Director of Health Services Bethany Massey. The group worked in the Misión Para Cristo clinic in Jinotega and travelled out to remote communities almost two hours away from the clinic.
As the only student nurse on the trip, she was the only student with clinical experience, and many of the biology majors looked to her to confirm their triage findings or to give needed injections.
“I gave more shots in three days than in three semesters of school,” she said. “The team was really encouraging. They called me the ‘nurse supervisor,’” laughs Dinh.
One day, one of the students kept getting a particularly low pulse reading on a patient. She asked Dinh to double-check her results. She took the patient’s pulse and told the student she was right; the pulse rate was low. So they marked the finding on the chart for the doctor. Later she learned that the doctor had discovered a potential cardiac abnormality because of the note in the chart.
That was a big moment for Dinh and the psychology student who spotted the problem. They realized they had played a role in possibly saving someone’s life.
During the mission, Dinh said she saw Jesus in the doctor, who had worked at the clinic for more than 10 years.
“She was so good at what she was doing,” said Dinh. “She traveled with us every day. She never hesitated to teach us about the procedures. She let a lot of biology students shadow her, and she taught us some Spanish.”
She also saw Jesus in the patients, relating the story of a woman who came in with an infected wound on her foot. Watching Massey care for the patient’s dirty, noxious wound without hesitation made her realize how blessed she is to live in a country where such conditions are rare.
Dinh returns home to Vietnam for a few weeks each year. While there, she usually shadows her mother at work. After working in so many different health care environments, Dinh said she better understands the existing health care needs in her home country and would like to coordinate a Lipscomb-hosted medical mission trip to Vietnam in the near future. In the long-term, she would like to earn a master’s degree, possibly in acute care nursing practice and then go back to Vietnam and work as a nurse.
“It’s been a really good journey for me,” Dinh said. “I came in, with no family in the U.S. A Christian family took me in, and I’ve been with them ever since. I’ve been surrounded by Christians at school, and now I have faculty who try to give us the best opportunity to become a good citizen and a good person.
“In the education I get from Lipscomb, the faculty is always talking about giving back and serving the community. That’s what I really want to do: go back to Vietnam and do something to pay it forward.”