As someone once said, "Nurses are the heartbeat of healthcare." They are the human side of what can be an otherwise cold and clinical experience for many patients and their families. The constant comfort, compassion, and education that nurses provide can be as vital to a patient's well-being as any treatment or procedure, and can mean the difference between recovery and mortality.

In the fall of 2011, an ISHI team of 7 nurses:

Cathy Blaskewicz-ER Nurse Practitioner
Stephanie Burroughs-ER Nurse
Janet Clausen-ER Nurse
Michele Egarian-ER Nurse Practitioner
Natalia McTighe-ER Nurse
Jhoselyn Thomas-ER Nurse
Emma Toussaint-ER Nurse

accompanied by photographer Nura Qureshi, and administrator Caitlin Blaskewicz, will travel to a remote village in southeastern Guatemala to care for the Mayan Indians living along the Rio Dulce. The group will be hosted by Jungle Medic Missions and will spend 9 days working from Jungle Medic's mobile clinic (a bus converted into a fully functioning medical facility) that has the unique ability to reach areas that have never before been visited by a doctor. According to Bryan Buchanan, founder of Jungle Medic Missions, "there are 137 villages in the Rio Dulce Izabal area of Guatemala that have no medical or dental care at all, and only subsist on corn tortillas for their three meals a day." It has been their three year-long mission to provide free medical and dental care to the Mayan population of the Rio Dulce, and to teach them gardening skills that will feed them for a lifetime. Bryan's vision for Jungle Medic's future reaches far beyond the mobile clinic to a day when he can build a small hospital, staffed by volunteer surgeons, doctors, nurses, medical students, and lay people, where they can not only treat basic emergencies but also "do emergency surgeries like appendectomies and cesarean sections to save mothers and babies lives." But at the moment, that vision has not yet been realized.

That's where ISHI comes in. Many of the nurses traveling to Guatemala are long-time ISHI volunteers, who have traveled with ISHI's core team of surgeons and anesthesiologists to places such as Haiti, where people are in dire need of immediate surgical care. In addition to manning the mobile clinic, the nurses will also be conducting a triage to identify candidates for a future ISHI surgical mission, thereby bringing Bryan's vision to life.

Make sure to follow our field blog, which will feature daily posts written by our nurses and non-medical team members, by visiting the mission blog.