Nurses in training set sights on Guatemala

At the College of Mount Saint Vincent, service is so important that the institution refers to undergraduates not as students, but “leaders in service.” The administration constantly encourages them to volunteer, raise funds for worthy causes and participate in service events.

Every year for the last five years, the college has sent a group of seniors from the nursing program to rural Guatemala to help in health clinics in the Sololá region.

This time, senior class president Hersy Contreras plans to take the trip in January, along with four fellow nursing students: Catherine Reiss, Kathryn Dalton, Briggette Parra and Emily Petrillo.

“I have an interest down the line getting into health care policy and obviously I would like to touch on global health care,” Ms. Contreras said. “We don’t get the opportunity as nursing students to study abroad because our curriculum is very rigorous and we have to take our courses here, so it will be very interesting to see when we come back how we can spread to the community what our experience was.”

She added that previous participants described the trip as life-changing.

The Sisters of Charity, the Catholic order that founded the College of Mount Saint Vincent, run the four clinics where the students will be volunteering. Ms. Reiss said she remembered hearing about this trip for nursing students when she was applying to the college.

“This was one of the big things that they had talked about, is that the mission of the Sisters of Charity is to bring service to everybody worldwide,” she said. “My mom is an alum, and she’s going to be chaperoning us on the trip. She’s also a nurse, so we’re all going together. It’s been my dream since freshman year to do this together.”

On Nov. 5, the students held an event at the college to raise awareness both about the trip and global health issues in general. They also held a bake sale and a raffle to raise funds for the journey and to support the population served in the clinics.

“We’re raising money to bring little things like stickers, crayons, books — little things we can give the kids there because a lot of them are underprivileged,” Ms. Reiss explained.