GW Nursing Magazine Spring 2013

Jill O’Brien, ABSN ‘13, consults with patients in the clinic established by the GW team during
one of the 2012 medical missions to Haiti.
morning we drive out to different sites to
see 100 to 200 people,” says Jacqueline
Wavelet, a clinical instructor and clinical
nurse specialist with the School of Nursing.
Ms. Wavelet went to Haiti this past July.
She is no stranger to working in difficult
and demanding medical situations. For
instance, she has worked with Operation
Walk Virginia, a nonprofit, which sends
surgeons and nurses to developing
countries to perform hip and knee
replacements. In Nicaragua, she assisted
with 12 surgeries a day for a week and
educated local doctors and nurses on how
to care for patients afterward. Ms. Wavelet’s
team gathered and organized 300 boxes of
medical supplies for the surgeries and also
for donations to the local hospitals.
“These surgeries help people walk
again and allow them to regain their
independence,” says Ms. Wavelet, who
has also traveled to Ecuador with
Operation Walk.
The results in Haiti reflected a need
for basic health care. Some of the work
included hygiene education and disease
management; some involved simply giving
pills to deworm children. But, Ms. Wavelet
says, the environment at times made the
trip just as challenging and stressful as her
earlier surgery missions.
For one thing, the terrain is remote. GW
volunteers had to drive over rutted roads,
through riverbeds, and along the sides
of cliffs to set up a clinic in abandoned
buildings or under a tree. Hundreds of
patients could be waiting for them, and
hundreds more could be on the way, atop
donkeys, on the back seats of motorcycles,
or on foot.
“What we do is primary care, ruralbased
community medicine,” says Dr.
Summer, the program leader. “We run
mobile clinics. It is two to three hours to the
nearest standing clinic. We can see 1,000
people with everything from arthritis to
high blood pressure to worms, tuberculosis
and HIV. Whoever walks through we see.”
The first day of the weeklong mission is
devoted to community visits to get to know
residents and to find out what residents
eat, what they grow on farms, and where
they get their water. “That day was more
for education,” says Ms. Braden, the nurse
practitioner student. “This is how the
people are living, which we will take to the
clinic and make more realistic suggestions.”
The group listened a lot through
interpreters. “When we went to the first
village, I was pretty quiet,” Mr. Rose, the
recent ABSN graduate from Nashville, says.
“I wanted to try and show as much respect
as possible.”
On the second day, they started to work
in mobile clinics. Just establishing the clinic
could be a difficult job. Where should they
set up the examining room? How about
the waiting room? Where do they dispense
drugs? Which patients need to be seen
right away because they are acutely ill?
And how do they talk to patients? What
puts them at ease to open up about what
ails them?
“I learned how important it is to be
organized on this trip,” says Eliza Singer,
14 GW NURSING