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A local, non-profit group called intercultural nursing goes to El Cercado in San Juan in the Dominican Republic each year to set up medical clinics. The group is made up of about twenty nurse practitioners, nursing students, and interpreters who speak spanish, but no doctors. Some of the volunteers, like Scottie Mills, a retired nurse, have been going to the DR for over twenty years, while for some the experience is a new one.
During the year, the group collects medical supplies and other things like new toothbrushes to bring on the trip. Last year Scottie Mills made homemade bags to carry things like food and medicine. Some participants set up fundraisers and raise money to buy the supplies. Others bring medicine from the hospitals that they work at, while some collect money and medicine at their church. Scottie Mills used to put a box in CHP where she worked, and other people would donate medicine.
After the supplies are rounded up the group usually gets invited by an organization which provides a sort of dormitory to stay in for the two week trip. Each day the nurses load a truck with the medicine and drive to a new town, setting up clinics in schools, churches and even sometimes in houses. The local people then buy a ticket and get in line. The ticket is more of a sense of security than anything. The tickets cost only about 25 cents but make the people confident that they will get good help because they paid. The tickets also have numbers to keep the lines orderly because the clinics see around 100 people per day.
During the year different clinics go to the Dominican Republic including medical clinics like intercultural nursing, but also other clinics to help build schools, houses, and other buildings. Most clinics in the area are brought in by an incredible community leader named Joanna.
With Joanna helping many different clinics the group occasionally gets some help from peace corps members that are living in the Dominican Republic and local health care workers. Joanna also has many other ways of helping the community. She funds a elderly home, has a recycle program that then builds houses out of the plastic bottles and other thing that they find. Joanna has been there for 30 years and know nearly everyone in the community.
Interpreter Havana Larraz explaining an inhaler
The trip goes beyond the medicine, the patients get to socialize with the nurses too. The patients tell stories, some being hard to listen to.
“They come with a headache but then they say that their son just got killed in a motorcycle accident and now there's nobody to work in the field and they have these two little children because their daughter died, you know we end up like crying sometimes because the stories are so sad and there's nothing you can really do to [help] them, you can give them an aspirin for the headache.” Said Scottie when recalling some of the things she had heard.
The trip to the Dominican Republic is an experience for everyone involved. It helps people in need get the medicine that they have to have. It also is a socially bonding trip that lets people experience other people and their culture.