Jobs in Phnom Penh International University in Cambodia

With excitement mixed with trepidation, a group of seven students from Belmont University School of Nursing spent three weeks this past May in Phnom Penh, Cambodia working at the Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE for the poor while earning course credit.  Students divided their clinical time between the medical and surgical wards, the operating room, the emergency room, the outpatient clinic, home visits to AIDS patients and a hospice for AIDS patients.  Students were interested to see how health care had developed following the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970’s.  They met one nurse, Mom Sam Oeun, who had been working during this regime and had been sent into the provinces to live with her family in one room with very little food.  Fearing for her life, she hid her status as a nurse until Pol Pot’s reign ended and then returned to nursing.  Many examples of courage and struggle were seen among the Khmer people.