Editor’s note: The following post was written by Emily Scott, RN, vice president of One Nurse at a Time. One Nurse at a Time is a nonprofit organization created to help nurses become involved in the humanitarian and volunteer arena. Health Volunteers Overseas has chosen to publish this guest post in order to highlight the work of One Nurse at Time—and the many dedicated nurse volunteers they support—in honor of National Nurses Week. If you are a nurse who is interested in volunteering with HVO, but cannot afford the costs associated with an assignment, we encourage you to check out the many scholarship opportunities available through One Nurse at a Time. Also – keep an eye on their blog for an HVO guest post that will be published in the coming weeks!
There are many barriers that prevent nurses from volunteering: the financial burden, the fear of traveling and practicing in an unfamiliar setting, the challenge of how to even get started planning a trip in the first place. One Nurse At A Time’s mission is to break down those barriers, so that any nurse who wants to volunteer their skills can do so.
We pursue this mission in many different ways, one of which is offering scholarships to help nurses offset the cost of their medical missions. Many nurses can’t afford the price of a plane ticket to serve in another country, especially when they’re taking vacation time from their jobs or going unpaid.
Pamela Van Vleet, a recent scholarship recipient, is a perfect example of the kind of difference a scholarship can make. After retiring from bedside nursing, Pamela went on her first medical mission to Cambodia. As many nurses do, Pamela founder herself “emotionally committed to volunteering again in under-served communities around the globe.” With the expense of these missions becoming a concern for her, Pamela applied for a scholarship from One Nurse At A Time and recently served again in India! If you or someone you know could benefit from a medical mission scholarship, the application and requirements can be found on our website.
But what if you’re thinking about volunteering for the very first time, and you have no idea where to start? There are literally hundreds of organizations seeking volunteer nurses – how do you find one that’s right for you?
To address that question, One Nurse At A Time maintains an online directory of organizations looking for nurse volunteers. With over 450 organizations listed (including HVO!), you can find somewhere to serve in any state in the US and every corner of the world. Just enter in the variables that apply to you – the location where you want to volunteer, how long you can serve for, what area of nursing you specialize in, etc – and you’ll get a list of organizations that meet those criteria. You can check out that directory here.
If heading out for a medical mission on your own still seems daunting, you’re not the only one. For that reason we also run a program called Jo’s Nurses (named for an early supporter of One Nurse At A Time). Once or twice a year, we plan a Jo’s Nurses trip for only first-mission nurses. We partner with an organization we know and trust on the ground in a developing country, give our team members plenty of preparation beforehand, and a more experienced humanitarian nurse accompanies and mentors them throughout the entire mission. In the great nursing tradition of “See one, Do one, Teach one” the idea of Jo’s Nurses is to “Dream One, Do One, Lead One” in the hopes that our first-mission nurses will be leading their own trips as mentors in subsequent years.