In July, fourteen graduate-entry nursing students from Ohio State College of Nursing traveled to Northern Ireland for a two-week immersion into one of the world's most distinctive health systems.
Based at Ulster University's campuses in Derry~Londonderry and Belfast, students spent their days comparing the United Kingdom’s National Health Service and Northern Ireland's integrated Health and Social Care model with the U.S. health system they are training to enter.
The experience went well beyond the classroom. Students attended seminars with Ulster University's School of Nursing and Paramedic Science, toured clinical and simulation facilities, and met with local health and social care leaders to see firsthand how care is organized, financed, and delivered in a devolved system.
A defining thread of the trip was the border itself. Students observed how cross-border cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — including cancer and cardiac service partnerships that route patients across the border for care — has continued to strengthen in the years since Brexit.
Rather than disrupting collaboration, structures like the Common Travel Area and joint health initiatives have helped sustain, and in some cases improve, health outcomes for communities on both sides of the border.
For students used to thinking about health systems within a single national framework, seeing two governments coordinate care delivery across a political boundary offered a powerful lesson in what population health can look like when policy follows patients rather than borders.
Students balanced this systems-level learning with reflective engagement in Derry~Londonderry and Belfast, sites where the legacy of conflict and its lasting effects on community health and deprivation are still visible today.
"This is exactly the kind of experience that shapes a nurse's entire worldview," said Dr. Stephen McGhee, director of international educational initiatives. "Watching our students grapple with how a border can either divide health care or, through genuine cooperation, actually strengthen it — that's a lesson no lecture hall back in Columbus could ever teach. These fourteen students returned home with a far deeper understanding of what population health really means, and I have no doubt it will shape how they practice for the rest of their careers."
The study abroad experience forms the foundation of a new course, Population Health Across Borders: Northern Ireland, which will offer future cohorts of Ohio State nursing students the same opportunity to learn health care delivery on the ground, across the border and across the world.