Former nurse puts specialty skills to use in Nepal - The Ellsworth American
After 27 years working as a critical care nurse and educator, serving as president of the Maine Nursing Association, the master of the Trenton Grange, playing in a folk orchestra and raising two daughters, Joe Niemczura decided it was time for a... Which is why, on April 25 at 11:56 a. m. , the former Maine Coast Memorial Hospital nurse was in Nepal watching the water in his drinking glass start to vibrate. “I knew at once it was an earthquake,” he recalls, referring to Nepal’s deadly earthquake, killing more than 9,000. “But I was far from the epicenter at the time, working on a health project in the Terai district. “I wish I could say there was some deep-seated reason or destiny fulfillment for my choosing Nepal,” he says, “but it was essentially a country I pulled out of a hat. The critical care nurse made his first trip there in 2011, and has returned every year since — spending months and even a full year as part of Critical Care Nepal (CCNEP) training Nepalese doctors and nurses in advanced cardiac life support. “People in Maine, especially the Hancock County area, should be very grateful for the level of medical care they have available to them,” Niemczura says. Niemczura says hospitals there must recycle any supplies they can, including washing and reusing latex gloves — although he believes the practice of reusing syringes has been discouraged. Source: www.ellsworthamerican.com
