Mission to Honduras.

Abstract: I have volunteered for many years for a woman's organization raising money to build trade and technical schools around the world, but I had never been asked to use my education as a nurse for this purpose. When the opportunity came for me and my classmates to join a volunteer mission to Honduras we jumped at the chance. Since we were all nurses we knew how to deliver patient care. This mission gave us the opportunity to use our newly acquired nurse practitioner skills. It also gave us the opportunity to see first hand how much need there is in other countries, as well as our own, for professional volunteers to help in multicultural settings. Key Words: Honduras; Professional Volunteers; Nursing Care While a graduate student in the nurse practitioner program at Concordia University-Wisconsin I had the opportunity to do some volunteer work and enhance my skills at the same time. My classmates, instructors, and I were invited to join the General Baptist Mission to Honduras. Although they already had missionaries in Honduras, this was the first religious-medical mission they had undertaken. Honduras is still one of the least developed and industrialized countries in Central America, but while traveling from the airport to the mission house in San Pedro Sula we all commented on the fact that the area looked very much like home. There was a large shopping mall and even a Pizza Hut. The next day when we traveled to Sulaco where we were to set up the clinic we changed our minds. Sulaco is a small town set in the mountains about five hours away from San Pedro. A lot of the trip was done on dirt roads, which get washed out during the rainy season. After seeing the town and the people, it made us see the way people truly live in what we call a "third-world country, and how much we have in our country that we daily take for granted. We are living in a world that is changing dramatically it seems almost from minute to minute. Health care is not only everyone's right, but also everyone's responsibility. Medical knowledge should not be the guarded secret of a select few, but should be freely shared by everyone. The health care worker's first job is to share her knowledge and help educate people. Your first job is to teach and unless you keep learning more, soon you will not have anything new to teach others (Werner, Thuman, & Maxwell, 1992). "Today in overdeveloped as well as under-developed countries, existing health care systems are in a state of crisis. Often human needs are not being well met. There is too little fairness. Too much is in the hands of too few" (Werner et al., 1992). Society will always be challenged by the real problems of sickness, hunger, poverty, disability, childcare, and aging. AlI people share a desire for lives of dignity for themselves and their families (Keaveney & Marquez, 1996). Volunteer medical missions are a way of meeting some of the needs of the underserved population. There are many acknowledged benefits of volunteering. It helps build a sense of community, breaks down barriers between people and often raises the quality of life (Gerson, 1997). Despite hectic schedules, work loads, and family commitments, many Americans are sharing what little spare time they have with others who are less fortunate. People are searching for things to do that are rewarding. They are finding that there is more to life than going to work and coming home (Hemmer, 1996). A volunteer service experience can be both unpredictable and confusing as we learned when we went to set up the clinic. We were in Sulaco during Independence Week so were able to use the school for our clinic. What we didn't expect was that there was no electricity or clean running water available. The rooms were very sparsely furnished having only a large table and several small desks in each of the rooms. Since there were no paved walks or streets in town, there was dust and dirt everywhere, so our first job was to get the rooms as dust free as possible by sweeping. …