When Your Calling Is To Care

For most of us, a vacation entails going away to sandy beaches, frosty glasses and plenty of time to unwind.

For 20 nurses and doctors from St. Paul’s Hospital, “going away” is working unpaid, assuming your own travel and accommodation costs, and helping to fundraise before you even leave.

This cohort of nurses and doctors have been taking part in health-care missions to developing countries, year after year.

One of these people is Dr. Joe Del Vicario, a St. Paul’s anesthesiologist, who is the current president with the Canadian not-for-profit, volunteer-run organization, Health 4 Humanity (H4H). He’s made 14 trips to Guatemala through the non-profit, including a three-week trip in late 2018. Dr. Tom Goetz, a St. Paul’s orthopedic surgeon, is another volunteer. He’s been going on missions for the past two years. St. Paul’s anesthesiologist Dr. Jim Prentice has come for about a decade. Other members of the team from St. Paul’s include recovery room nurses, operating nurses, orthopedic nurses and general surgeons, like Dr. Tracy Scott.

“It’s a very committed group,” says Dr. Vicario. “And three quarters of the volunteers return the next year because they find the trip so fulfilling. The gratitude from the patients we help is moving.”

The Canadian volunteers carried out their first mission in Guatemala in 2001 because of a personal contact in the country and have gone there annually ever since. They care for patients at Las Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro Catholic Hospital in Antigua, run by Franciscan friars.

Dr. Del Vicario says the medical care is on a par with Canadian health care due in part to the modern equipment, all donated, the team procures. There are enough operating room (OR) supplies to fit a 40-foot container, shipped before the team arrives each year.

The need for more supplies and equipment always exists, he says. “But financially, I think we’ve touched enough hearts that funds come our way.”