Nursing grad encourages nurses to volunteer
Nursing grad encourages nurses to volunteer
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| Tracy Glenn with community members at Kibagabaga Hospital, in Rwanda. |
By Tamara Letkeman, doug Editor
Tracy Glenn is encouraging other nurses to volunteer in different parts of the world to provide medical care to people in need.
"I hope that through reading about my experiences, Douglas College student nurses can see that there are many opportunities for different types of nursing worldwide," says Tracy, who graduated from the Douglas Nursing program in 1991.
Tracy is now working in Qatar planning a new hospital, where she's part of the Clinical Planning Department responsible for specific areas of the Perioperative Department, including the post-anesthesia care unit.
In February, Tracy travelled to Rwanda with the International Organization for Women and Development, a charitable organization, to treat women with obstetric fistula, a medical condition in which a hole develops in the birth canal.
During the two-week mission, the team of 30 volunteers, which included top surgeons from the United States, performed 46 fistula repairs. All the volunteers paid their own way.
Tracy went on a similar mission to Guatemala recently with a Vancouver-based charity called Project HANDS. The surgical team did hernia repairs and hysterectomies on rural Mayan women for free.
"I really try to encourage and hopefully inspire nurses to consider volunteering, because these women are really in need of our help," Tracy says. "I hope by telling my story that even a few nurses may be moved."
Read an in-depth interview with Tracy about her experiences in Rwanda in the Gulf Times.
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