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| James Mattson |
As editor of Reflections on Nursing Leadership, I get to interact with some of the nicest people around, people who care so much about others that they will go to the ends of the earth—literally—to care for them.
With regard to location, Haiti isn’t what you’d call the end of the earth, but responding to the needs of Haitians devastated by the recent earthquake isn’t a walk in the park, either, as evidenced by the recent series of articles by Assistant Editor Jane Palmer in which nurses who responded to the crisis reflect on their experiences.
Steve Spry, one of those responders, laid out $1,500 in cash and forfeited precious vacation time to go to Haiti. Although the island nation is in the Caribbean, it’s not what most people think of as a vacation spot, and Steve had some trepidation about participating in such a mission. “My main concern was that I had not done clinical nursing for about 10 years,” he says. “I was very nervous.” But he hopes to return next year. “The Haitian people—their faith and strength are amazing,” he observes in “Haiti: Once you’ve been there, you are never the same.”
Nurses who sacrificed their own comfort to respond to the needs of the people of Haiti are also amazing—people such as Spry, Tim Bristol and Mari Cordes, whose reflections on their experiences in Haiti are captured in this series. I hope you take the time to read each article and look at the pictures.
Looking for a good reason to leave your comfort zone and participate in a humanitarian mission somewhere beyond the hospital, clinic or classroom you commute to every day? Read the article by Sheralyn Watson, a founding member of PRN Relief International and a nursing instructor in the Department of Nursing at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She offers four great reasons to sign up for an international mission.RNL
