Jo's Nurses - First One Nurse At A Time Mission

We now have a firm plan for a trip in February 2013 and would like to hear from you of your interest.

There is space for 4 nurses - 2 from Feb 16-23 and 2 from Feb 23 - Mar 2.

Location:  Guatemala.  First week will be working in villages around Rio Dulce in the northeast.  Second week is working in villages around Monte Rico in the southwest.  Flights are in and out of Guatemala City.  I will be accompanying both weeks to be your support/mentor.

Cost to you/Commitment:  $250.  One Nurse At A Time, Jo's Nurses program will pay the rest of your trip costs (approximately $1000 per person).  You must also make a moral commitment to do another volunteer trip by the end of 2014.  Our hope is this mission will get you over the "hump" of going on a first mission, that you will be excited and eager to volunteer again somewhere around the world.

You will also be expected to attend planning meetings and packing meetings prior to the trip to get comfortable with your teammates and participate in the preparations.  At least 1 planning and 1 packing are required (unless you're out of the Seattle area, then we'll provide reading material and phone calls to bring you up to date).  Meetings are 1/5 and 1/26 0930 - noon (usually at Group Health Central) and packing is 2/2 and 2/9 0930 until finished (also at Group Health)

Organization is Guatemala Village Health.  Spanish is helpful, but not an absolute requirement as translators are available.  You'll be asked to not only be flexible and take on various tasks, but will also be asked to assume a specific role such as triage (and teaching triage techniques to the local nurses), patient education (they've done groups for patients about dehydration, back pain, headache, skin issues, for example 5-10 patients with similar issues and give out Tums, tylenol, ibuprofen, etc.)  Training of nursing staff - sharing what and how we work here in the US with the local nurses and health promoters who have much less formal training.  They see lots of diabetics, hypertension, prenatal care, malnutrition ... These will be less clinic based and more village based, and an opportunity to be with people in their home environments.

Please express your interest prior to December 15.  Send an email to OneNurseAtATime@gmail.com.  Include a brief introduction of who you are, what your nursing background is and tell us why you want to participate in this mission, how this will impact your career/life, what you anticipate your future in volunteering to be.  Tell us what you do well, what you don't.  What you bring to this mission and why you should be selected to participate.  Don't forget your contact information!  I'll follow up with each of you, conduct a phone interview and present candidates to the board of directors for a decision before the end of December.

Let me know of any questions and hope to hear from you by Dec 15.

Thanks, 
Sue

Mission Impossible?

Since you read our blog, or are a fan of our Facebook page, twitter, or pinterest, you either have been on a mission or are interested in going on one. Well this post will specifically address those who haven’t been on a mission…yet. J

This is the picture I want to have in my head when I think about going on my first mission.  J

So, how do you start the process? I wrote a while back about the process of becoming a Red Cross Volunteer and hopefully gave good instructions on how that works, but what if you want to volunteer with an organization that isn’t as big as the Red Cross?

Several of the organizations we highlight weekly are not the bigger humanitarian organizations such as Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross. It’s difficult to find an organization if you do not know what you are looking for. Luckily we have made it a little bit easier for you.

With those thoughts in mind, I started to think about what my plans are going to be for this next year. Do I want to go and participate in helping internationally like all of the scholarship applicants I read about? I have a lot to think about- I have two young kids under the age of 3. I wonder how will my husband handle it? Will I be ok traveling by myself without my family and without seeing my husband and kids every night?

So, using what we created on our web page (here) I started to look at “Global Health Nursing”. I’m not totally sure what it means, but I think I have a faint idea and I know FOR sure I can’t handle pediatrics at this point in my life…and with that in mind, pediatrics excludes, disaster response, peds, and possibly women’s health. After deciding what kind of nursing I was interested in the next question on the list wanted to know how far I was willing to go. I selected international. Why? Because I thought, well I do volunteer locally, and I really want to experience health care in Central America or South America (I think Africa is too far for me at this point in my life).

The question “are you interested in an experience that is faith based” is next on the list of questions. For me it doesn’t matter and I would like to have every opportunity present itself first and then choose. The final question is in regards to the length of the trip, I choose short less than 4 weeks and optimally less than 2 weeks would be awesome – (because I think I would truly miss my family WAY too much to go longer).

Up popped about 10-15 different organizations for me to choose from. Excellent! But then I was suddenly overwhelmed. Yikes. What do I do with this information? How do I know which organization is a good fit, or that has had good first mission experiences, would I have help when I was there, what if I didn’t know what to do? The list of questions started to form in my head, and it kept going. I had to start somewhere, so I started to scan each organization by their name. What was interesting was that I recognized a lot of organizations from the scholarship applicants I read with One Nurse At A Time. For me that was refreshing, but I can imagine, for someone who doesn’t have that opportunity, it would be overwhelming to get this giant list and not know what really to do with it.

Since some sounded familiar I picked the first one that my eyes found, Christian Medical Mission Aww…more familiar faces… J What a relief. I click on the details button read the short bio on ONAAT. I recognized that the short bio’s were SOOOO helpful. When I checked out others, I could recognize right away, that I wouldn't be a fit because I could not determine from their organizations name if they were peds specialized or they were stationed in areas that were farther away than Central America.  

After determining I wanted to check out Christian Medical Missions, I simply clicked on the link provided. EASY!  Their website is super easy to navigate! Searching through their next trips, I found one which may work for me, it’s in May of next year. I clicked on the trip details and up pops the needs of mission. Here are the details: Villages surrounding Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, May 11-19^th, 2013. What I can’t tell is if they have filled all of their positions for RN’s. It appears that they have one RN that has filled the pharmacy/RN position – so I will email them specifically to ask if the RN positions are filled. For more info about this trip click here.

Wow – before I started I thought it would have been more difficult- but as it turns out WE have a great website that will help you FIND the organizations you want to work with. Yeah!

As a side note, even though we have cancelled Jo’s Mission for this fall, we are definitely looking at opportunities to start it up again this spring. PLEASE STAY tuned!

Cheers-

ONAAT Crew

Jo's Nurses

Jo’s Nurses is a medical mission for current, active nurses who have never volunteered abroad but want to begin to incorporate volunteering into their careers. A small group of nurses (6-8) will travel with One Nurse staff to rural Honduras, where they will work alongside local nurses in various areas of a hospital as well as in rural clinics. One Nurse will provide pre-trip orientation and training so nurses are comfortable and informed.

When: November 5-11, 2012
Where: Rural Honduras
Cost: One Nurse will cover all trip costs except airfare
Application: Use the application on this site and note on your form it is for Jo’s Nurses. There is no application fee for Jo’s Nurses. All applications are due by September 15, 2012. We will let you know by September 30 if you are chosen for the mission.

Requirements:

• Current, active nurses (LPN, RN, ARNP)
• Must be Spanish speaking (translators will not be available)
• Attend 2-3 pre-trip meetings and information sessions (we are working on obtaining CEs for this)
• Nurse to provide airfare round trip Seattle to Tegucigalpa (approx $500)
• Be prepared to share educational opportunities with your local counterparts in Honduras — presentations and while working alongside
• Nurse to update any necessary immunizations and medications
• Nurse must have a valid passport
• Nurse commits to at least one international mission or local volunteer work in 2013
• Preference will be given to Swedish Medical Center employees
• All education levels and areas of expertise are welcome to apply
• Nurses will present their experience as a group to Swedish Nursing Grand Rounds in January 2013.

Jo’s Nurses is named after Marilyn Jo Schuyler, an early supporter of One Nurse at a Time, who set up a memorial fund to assist nurses who have never been on a mission before. She hoped the experience would ignite a passion for volunteering.