Nursing teachers from Haiti study US methods at Boston’s Regis

Germaine Pierre Laine now knows that when a patient is barrel-chested, that might indicate a lung disease. She has learned how to percuss a patient's back and abdomen, using short, sharp blows and listening to the sound they produce to test for illnesses. But one of the most powerful lessons the 41-year-old Haitian nurse has learned during a six-week course at Regis College is much simpler: that a nurse can sit on a hospital bed with a patient. In Haiti, most nurses consider this practice inappropriate, she said. But after seeing nurses sit on patients' beds here, Laine has decided she will try it when she returns to the National School of Nursing in Cap-Haïtien next month. Laine is one of 12 nursing teachers from Haiti spending part of the summer at Regis for a crash course in American nursing, gaining expertise they will then pass on to a new generation of nurses back home.