Nurse from Milton spending nine months in Bolivia

For nurse Heather Szymczak, the chance to fly off to the remote rain forest of Bolivia for nine months is a dream come true -- but not for the usual reasons of travel and adventure. Ever since she was 15, Szymczak has volunteered to do humanitarian-aid work in Third World countries. This mission is different, she said, calling it "a test."
Szymczak, 33, of Milton, has been awarded a nine-month fellowship by Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has worked for two years as a nurse on an adult surgical floor. She is one of three winners of the Thomas S. Durant Fellowship in Refugee Medicine, awarded every year, and she chose Concern America, a small nonprofit agency in Chicago that provides humanitarian help, for her mission.
She will work in a health clinic in Rurrenabaque, a village in the Beni province in Bolivia, and spend part of her time in a remote area of the rain forest. Once a month, she will take four-day trips on the Beni River, stopping at villages along the way to provide care and health education.
What most excites her is the chance to do more than just go to a foreign country, work in a clinic, pack up her bags and leave. "This program also emphasizes creating a sustainable medical mission -- passing on some of the information and skills to the people who live there," she said in an interview on Sunday, Aug. 19. In the Concern America program, the most remote areas in the rain forest elect a "health promoter," a member of the village who becomes their "official" health provider. These villagers receive four years of training, working with different nurses and doctors at different times, to provide basic care such as dispensing painkillers and simple antibiotics, providing routine care and testing.
Szymczak will provide support and education to the villagers for nine months.
Szymczak grew up in Duxbury and graduated from Duxbury High School in 1992. She also earned a degree from Gordon College in Wenham, where the majored in social work and Spanish. She traveled in Spain during college and did short missions. After college, she worked at the Boston Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter, for more than three years, running the women's transitional program. For the next five years, she worked for
Medical Information Technology Inc. in Westwood, traveling and installing software for hospitals. She continued to participate in missions to Central America on her own and through her church.
In 2002, she began studying nursing at Simmons College in Boston and received
a bachelor's degree
in nursing in 2005.
In 2003, she led her first humanitarian mission for her church, New Hope Chapel of the South Shore, a nondenominational church in Norwell. That mission did a construction project and an after-school children's program.
On Sunday, Szymczak presented a program of her mission at the church's morning service at the Cushing Center in Norwell.
"This is a dream come true," she said. "It was instilled in me at a young age. I have been doing missions since age 15, and this is kind of the test of how well I can do." Sue Scheible may be reached at sscheible@ledger.com.
"I have been doing missions since age 15, and this is kind of the test of how well I can do."

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[patriotledger]

We welcome your comments on our videos. Posts will be removed if they are in bad taste or contain obscenities, but they will not be edited. Thanks for your interest in our site.

[rai1stein]

Do you have a follow up video?

[tommski]

I'd be very interested in seeing a follow up video of what it was like for you ... assuming you are home by now.

[lionking789]

hey this is a great video, its good to see great acts to help bolivia's indigenous ppl, specially in those areas were no one really well known or forgotten

[TheEyesOfNye]

Awsome! Way to go! A foreign exchange student is attending my school from Bolivia.

[Dreamland8]

Excellent video which highlights a local person doing a wonderful and selfless act by going to an area she has never been before!

Linda :)