Veteran and student nurses alike return home from caring overseaswith a rekindled sense of passion, mission and energy
By JOAN TUPPONCE

It was dark when Jennifer Peyton and several other nursing students arrived in San Ignacio, a small town in Belize, last January. Peyton, president of Nursing Students Without Borders of VCU, and her group were on their way to Clarissa Falls in western Belize where they would perform health screenings on children at a local clinic.

Peyton was interested in seeing what health care “looked like outside of the United States.” She also wanted to work, even if for only a short period, in a country where she wasn’t fluent in the native language. A rising senior in the VCU School of Nursing, Peyton often cares for non-English-speaking patients.

“I wanted to know what it feels like to interact within an environment that is not one’s own,” she explained. “Both of the reasons I went to Belize are rooted in my desire to better relate to many of the patients I have cared for over the past few years.”

Peyton is one of many nurses who travel outside of the U.S. to help others in need of medical care. Some travel with health-related nonprofit organizations; others are part of a hospital-sponsored mission.

Nursing Students Without Borders of VCU began its affiliation with Belize a few years ago when students traveled to the country to aid Margaret Juan, a British nurse who was running a clinic. This January, under the guidance of RNs such as Colby Kohler, who accompanied the VCU students, and the doctor at the clinic, the nursing students assessed patients, developed plans of care, performed wound care and assessed fetal heart tones and gestational age.

Peyton and her group also performed health screenings on more than 400 children. During the screenings, students conducted brief dental exams as well as hearing and eye tests. They checked patients’ blood pressure, height, weight and heart and respiratory rate. They also assessed for umbilical hernias. “We collected the data [as did the group that traveled the year before] and hope to create a database of baseline information that can be used for comparison when the child grows older,” Peyton said.

These types of health-based trips are positive for everyone involved, she adds. “Not only are we trying to provide additional health care in this area but we are also showing them that there are people in the world who are completely removed from their lives, have no ulterior motives and simply want to help.”
The group that traveled to Belize shared many heartwarming moments with each other as well as the people they served. When Peyton returned to Richmond, she felt a “freshly fueled passion” to help others. “I quickly realized that many of the moments in Belize filled with frustration about insufficient clinic supplies and simultaneous gratification of helping another person are also experienced here in Richmond,” she said. “As a result, [Nursing Students Without Borders of VCU] is now very involved in Richmond community efforts to help those immediately around us.”

A team of doctors, anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, nurses and physical and occupational therapists from the Bon Secours Richmond Health System experienced the same feelings when they traveled to Haiti in May. The trip was sponsored by the Salva Vida Fund, established in 1998. The fund supports medical mission trips to Haiti, Honduras, St. Vincent, Belize and the Dominican Republic. Dr. Fred McGlynn, an orthopedic surgeon, helped found the fund. He was a member of the eight-person team that visited Haiti in May.

During the trip, the group worked with Pazapa, a children’s organization, and Community Coalition for Haiti, an organization that provides health services for adults.

While they were in Haiti, the team performed operations on children and adults who had birth deformities or had been maimed in accidents or suffered complications from a lack of treatment or poor treatment for earthquake injuries.

McGlynn told Bon Secours that the Salva Vida team will make more visits to Haiti. “Instead of once a year, we’re going at least twice a year.”

RN Audrey Snyder, PhD, who serves as the nurse adviser for community outreach at the University of Virginia School of Nursing as well as assistant professor, also went to Haiti this February with the UVa/Lutheran Christian-Missouri Synod World Relief Team. It was her first disaster relief mission.
The team of eight was stationed in Jacmel, Haiti, just two weeks after the disastrous earthquake. The remote church where they were stationed served as a clinic by day and a place for displaced church members to sleep at night. The 125 patients who were seen each day on a first-come-first-serve basis heard about the clinic by word of mouth.

“We dealt with emergency situations as well as primary care,” Snyder explained. “Many of the problems were the result of people not being treated after the earthquake.”

The widespread destruction was an overwhelming sight. “The stench was really bad because there were dead bodies in the rubble,” Snyder said.

In addition to conducting the church clinic, the team also screened and helped educate pregnant women at a refugee camp set up and controlled by the Sri Lankan military. There were about 130 pregnant women in the camp of 3,000 refugees.

The team screened those women for preeclampsia and taught them about breast-feeding along with other things they could expect during their pregnancies and also after their babies were born.

The disaster brought with it some unusual situations. For example, many of the women had difficulty producing breast milk because of the stress they were suffering. That problem was magnified by a shortage of formula. “We had a 7-day-old baby whose mother was giving it cow’s milk twice a day,” recalled Snyder. “It wasn’t getting enough nutrition and it couldn’t digest the milk it was given.”

The trip was humbling for the veteran nurse. “I learned a lot more about myself,” she said. “The people in Haiti were amazing. There isn’t a lot of self-centeredness there. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that.”

In June, she traveled back to Jacmel. “This trip was more about primary care than disaster relief,” she said. “We saw some of the same patients we had seen in February.”

Even though conditions are better, the island still has a major health-care shortage. Refugee camps have swelled to 7,000 people living in incredibly small spaces. “They are living in cramped quarters,” Snyder said. “Conditions are still bad.”