Fifteen nursing and midwifery students from throughout Queensland face a learning curve almost as steep as the Himalayan mountains surrounding their intended study tour destination in Nepal...

The CQUniversity students have been fundraising and gathering medical equipment and supplies (everything from toothbrushes to fetal heart monitors) to ensure their trip will have lasting benefits for their host community of Pokhara.

Nepal-bound students Silvia Darro (left) and Emma McMahon discuss fundraising they have been coordinating with Jessie-Mae Harvey and Meighan Walker. The quartet have gained support from QCWA, Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul and Rotary so far. They are excited and believe the trip will be a boon for their life experience

This is the second annual Student Midwifery and Nursing Placement to Nepal organised by the University in conjunction with Antipodeans Abroad. A previous group travelled to a rural area of Thailand.

The students will attend lectures and interactive sessions at the local hospital in between visits to learn and help at rural health camps and outreach clinics, including a leprosy hospital and a tuberculosis centre. They will also visit a local high school, an old age home and an orphanage.

Students are also looking forward to tours of the surrounding area, which features the world's most spectacular mountain scenery. Those involved are from Rockhampton, Mackay, Bundaberg, Brisbane, Cherbourg, Townsville and Noosa.

One of the tour group's academic leaders, midwifery specialist Anne Eaton from Mackay, said students would experience how health camps and hospitals operate in a resource-challenged environment, while providing skills and delivering donated medical equipment and supplies.

"The overseas trips give students the chance to be a 'minority amongst the majority' and they often have to use sign language to communicate," Anne says.

Anne says her own experience shows that working within a vastly different environment can give people a deeper and richer outlook on life.

"It's good to encourage students and professionals to understand their own identify through interaction with other cultures. After all, Australia is becoming a much more multicultural society so it helps for people to open their eyes to a culturally diverse environment."