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Sue Averill, RN, is one of many ED nurses who take on additional challenges in the medical field. For Averill, volunteering on medical missions has become an important part of her life. On a recent mission to Monrovia, Liberia, Averill and medical teams treated about 300 patients a day. Most lived in 6- by 8-foot mud huts and suffered from a variety of ailments, including burns.

The 6-year-old girl was desperately ill with malaria. Sue Averill, RN, glanced at the girl with sadness as she and her colleagues prepared to transport her to the nearest medical facility hundreds of miles away.

Averill, an emergency department nurse at Northwest Hospital & Medical Center in Seattle, was in Monrovia, Liberia, serving on a medical mission. The disease had already ravaged the girl’s tiny body, and Averill fought back tears when she died in her arms en route to the hospital.

Averill is one of many emergency department nurses who take on additional challenges in the medical field. Some hold down second jobs as flight nurses or paramedics; others loan their expertise to medical missions or disaster teams.

For Averill, volunteering on medical missions has become an important part of her life. She works per diem at Northwest in order to remain flexible and travel on three or four medical missions a year.

After her first medical mission to Mexico in 1985, Averill was hooked.

“I realized I lived a pretty charmed life compared to many people in other parts of the world,” Averill says. “These people live in underdeveloped countries with no access to medical care.”

Averill just returned from Liberia on a mission with Northwest Medical Teams International, and plans to travel to Africa later this year with Doctors Without Borders.

In Monrovia, medical teams treated about 300 patients a day. Most lived in 6- by 8-foot mud huts and suffered from a variety of ailments.

Team members worked in primitive settings with basic medical supplies and were forced to rely on their assessment skills.

“We had a lot of pregnancy-related issues, but no diagnostic tools,” Averill says. “We quickly learned to improvise.”

Averill says medical missions offer wonderful opportunities for emergency department nurses.

“ER nurses think on their feet and work quickly without a lot of backup,” Averill says. “There are many wonderful medical organizations that desperately need nurse volunteers.”

Typically, organizations pay the airfare and living expenses of medical volunteers. Nurses can choose to go on missions lasting from one week to several months.

“The patients we treat are very grateful for the care we provide,” Averill says. “One man in Guatemala walked for five hours, then took a bus for 12 hours so we could operate on his son who was born with a cleft palate.”

Although the patients reap the rewards, so do the medical volunteers. “My work on missions has changed my whole outlook on life,” Averill says. “The experience renews your passion for nursing and makes you appreciate your own life.”

Putting out fires

Sometimes when Marty Vara, RN, is caring for patients in the emergency department at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi (Texas)-Memorial, they stare at him with confusion.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere else?” they ask. “Do you have a twin?”

Vara smiles and tells them about his other job, as a firefighter/paramedic for the City of Corpus Christi. Often his two worlds collide, and he finds himself caring for the same patients in the ED that he treated on emergency calls at their homes.

Vara always dreamed of becoming a nurse. His dad had diabetes, and watching his health decline fueled Vara’s desire to become a caregiver.

After high school, Vara applied to nursing school and was told that because he was a man, he was better off becoming a paramedic.

But he never gave up on becoming a nurse, and his wife encouraged him to pursue his lifelong dream.

“Being a paramedic made nursing school easier and being a nurse has made me a better paramedic,” Vara says. “As a nurse, I’m able to spend more time with patients and make more focused assessments.”