My Nonprofit Reviews

I am a family practice physician practicing in a small rural community, yet I always feel the desire to help people affected by disaster. I am on a Federal disaster team, deploying multiple times a year, and went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina with the Red Cross. A lot of deployments treat family doctors like they are not valued, sending out the surgeons and the ER docs. When I was invited to assist Medishare after the earthquake, we went to work almost immediately. I was able to offer my full range of training, taking care of injury patients, rehab patients, a STEMI patient, and OB. I worked 12 hour shifts each day until I got on the plane to go home. I slept on a cot with mosquito netting in a big tent right next to the hospital tent. I worked with wonderful interpreters, nurses, and USF residents, who did an amazing job. There was an atmosphere of teaching and learning. The patients were grateful, full of humor, and so resilient! I would go back in a moment, but it is hard to raise the funds. My church had to help me get to Florida, and donation dollars flew us from Miami to Port Au Prince. I had always wanted to volunteer in Africa, but here, right off of America's southeast coast, is a little country that desperately needs help to maintain these services which have roots here for over 20 years. I highly recommend this experience!