Tears Flow as China Nurses Head Home

Tears flowed occasionally during interviews earlier this week as three Chinese nurses talked about leaving Orange County for their homes, jobs and families in Peking and Shanghai.

The three are part of a group of 20 nurses who came to Golden West College in Huntington Beach last September through a program designed to teach advanced American health-care methods to Chinese nurses. The nurses, who came from eight major Chinese cities and were selected for the program through a national competition, were all awarded “certificates of completion” at a ceremony last night, and they are going home today.

They are looking forward to seeing their families again, said Gao Li, Xu Bing and Sun Hui-jun (who were designated as the group’s leaders by the Chinese Nursing Assn.), but they are sad to leave the American hosts who “adopted” them here.

“This is the first time that a group of nurses has come from China to study in the United States” in almost 40 years, said Grayce Roessler, a nurse who is Golden West’s coordinator of continuing education for health professionals. Normalization of relations between the United States and China in the 1970s made the visit possible, said Roessler, who developed the idea for the program and won the Chinese government’s approval during several visits to China between 1979 and 1984. She hopes to bring a second group of Chinese nurses to Golden West to start training in September, 1987, Roessler added.

Through classes taught at Golden West by outside instructors, all the nurses earned 22 units toward bachelor’s degrees in nursing, Roessler said. Those selected for the program all speak English and range in age from 23 to 46. Many became very attached to their Westminster, Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach hosts, who donated food, housing and other services, Roessler said.

“Emotionally it’s very difficult for us” to leave, said Xu, 36, a nursing supervisor from a Pekinghospital for government officials. Xu added that she was finding it “hard to sleep” at night because she would be leaving Westminster residents Joan and Bill Foley. The Foleys, she said, have two grown daughters “so they said I’m the adopted daughter. . . . They are very generous. . . . In a lot of ways, the (American) character is similar to the Chinese, it’s very understandable, very kind. . . . Before, I think the American people just love themselves, but now I know they’re a very loving people,” Xu said.

Joan Foley said she had “probably learned more” from hosting Xu than Xu had learned from being in the United States. “You almost appreciate your country more because you see it through (another’s) eyes. . . . We were hoping the visit would be pleasant, but it turned out to be a lot more pleasant than we expected,” Foley said. She and her husband hope to visit China in about two years, Foley added, and Xu has “offered to be our guide” there.

Before they came to the United States, said Gao, the nurses had heard a great deal about American “murders, divorce, drugs--lots of problems. We even worry about our safety,” Gao said. The reality of daily life in the United States was not so frightening as she had feared, added Gao, 31, a surgical nurse from a Peking military hospital.

Faced Some Adjustments

But the nurses did have adjustments to make. Americans are “very open--you kiss in public,” Xu said. American women, she added, often wear a lot of makeup, and “in China, we don’t use (makeup) very much. We used to think if you make up yourself, you’re not a very nice lady.” (The nurses seemed to have changed their minds about cosmetics, however, for they pulled compacts and lipsticks from their purses before being photographed.)

Before coming to the United States, each nurse had completed a three-year Chinese nursing school program and acquired at least five years of professional experience, but none had a university degree, Roessler said. The nurses’ air fare was paid by the Chinese government, and their classes were mostly taught by educators from the Consortium of the California State Universities, a Long Beach-based external degree program that is funded through private foundation donations and student tuition.

A $46,000 Kellogg Foundation grant paid for instructor fees, textbooks and the Chinese nurses’ tuition, according to Judith Lewis, director of the consortium’s statewide nursing program. Roessler said donations from local individuals and companies helped cover the nurses’ personal expenses beyond food and housing. The salary of Martha Weaver, a Golden West nursing instructor who became the coordinator of the Chinese nursing program and its only full-time employee, was paid through the college’s community services department, Roessler added.

The nurses took classes to compare health systems in different countries, to learn about psychosocial aspects of illness, to see American methods of teaching nursing skills and to learn about treating ethnic patients, Roessler said. They also visited several local hospitals, where they sometimes “worked as shadows to the nurses on the units,” Roessler added.

Impressed by Care

Gao, Xu and Sun said they had been very impressed by American nurses’ way of considering their patients’ psychological as well as physical well-being. In China, Gao said, nurses are taught a great deal about anatomy and physical treatment, but little about how to make their patients feel happier and more hopeful. One reason for this, the nurses agreed, is that Chinese nurses carry very heavy workloads and have less time to tend individual patients. Roessler said that while the United States has 1.7 million nurses for 240 million people, China has only 630,000 nurses for more than one billion people.

Xu said she would like to see more continuing education programs developed for nurses in China, and she would like to see Chinese nurses given more respect. “In China, people still look at nursing as just a job, very few look at it as a profession. . . . We have professional skills just like the engineer, the doctor,” she said.

Sun, 36, a pediatric nurse from Shanghai, said that during her time in the United States she visited a number of children’s hospitals. American pediatric wards are much more colorful than are Chinese pediatric wards, she said, and American nurses “respect the children very much and don’t want the children to feel powerless.”

In contrast, in China “every child is very precious to his parents and grandparents, but as soon as the children come into the hospital, they don’t have any power and they must listen to the nurses” and behave like adults, Sun said. When she gets home, she added, “if I can, I want to establish a playroom in my hospital.”

In trying to make some changes in Chinese nursing, “I know we will face a lot of difficulties, not only from the doctors but from the nurses,” Sun said, but the Golden West program students “will try our best to change things slowly and wisely.”

All Three Married

All three of the nurses interviewed (like most of the nurses in the program) are married, and each has one child. Gao’s son was only 2 1/2 years old when she left him, she said, and she has been concerned about his welfare. Letters from home have told her that the boy, who has been cared for by her husband and nursery workers, has had frequent fevers and “cried a lot,” she said. However, she wanted the chance to study in America, Gao said. “Our families support us and are very proud of us,” Xu added.

Aside from the people they’ve come to know, what will the nurses miss most when they go home? “Your beautiful country,” said Gao. (The nurses traveled, individually and in groups, on weekends and holidays to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Las Vegas, San Francisco, the Northern California redwood forests and elsewhere.)

“I’ll miss the hamburger,” said Xu, laughing. “And your private cars.” Added Gao: “I’ll miss your TV programs 24 hours a day--but not the commercials.” “The kitchens. I love your kitchens,” Sun said. “The private phones,” said Gao. “Most of us live in apartments in China--I’ll miss your beautiful houses” with front and back yards, Xu said. The wide variety of American stores, and California’s mild weather will also be missed, the nurses agreed, and, said Gao, “we’ll miss the (two-day) weekend.” (Most Chinese people work six days a week, said Xu, which gives them “a very very busy Sunday, and a tired Monday.”)

Asked if, given the choice, they would prefer living permanently in America to returning to China, the nurses looked thoughtful, then gave patriotic answers. “Definitely I would choose China,” said Xu, “because I should contribute myself to my country. I love the Chinese and I love China.

“I don’t want to live here because I’m Chinese,” she added, “but I want to visit” again, if possible, for further studies.

Weaver said she would find it hard to part from the Chinese nurses if she didn’t know she would see them again soon. She and Roessler will fly to Peking on Thursday, Weaver said, for a two-month tour.

Roessler said the two will travel “out on the old Silk Road, to look at the health care of minorities” in outlying areas of China. Then Roessler and Weaver will “visit all the cities the (20) nurses are from, and meet their families and give lectures,” Roessler said.

In the future, consortium instructors may go to China to teach more classes and help the 20 nurses complete their bachelor’s degrees, according to Lewis. Roessler said she also hopes to bring a number of Chinese hospitals’ nursing directors to California, so they can evaluate Western medical equipment and ideas.

“It’s not our intention to export the technology we have but to let them (the Chinese) select (from it) and integrate it” into existing Chinese nursing practices, Roessler said.