Holy Name Press Releases

Nurses from Haiti Train At Holy Name Medical Center

May 21, 2015

Nurses from a hospital in Haiti are undergoing special training in Holy Name Medical Center that will enable them to teach their peers additional skills, which in turn will help improve outcomes for patients. The six nurses, who work in Hôpital Sacrè Coeur in Haiti, are spending a week at Holy Name. Two are here this week and will be returning to Haiti on Friday.

Each nurse is focusing on a different specialty, including health assessments, pathophysiology - the study of cells and the development of disease, pharmacology, fundamentals of nursing, and medical/surgical I and II, which is the care of patients before and after surgery.

"Our goal is to help the clinicians and patients in Haiti and through providing resources, education, and training, we are able to do this," said Judy Kutzleb, Vice-President of Advanced Practice Professionals, who together with Sheryl Slonim, Holy Name's Chief Nursing Officer, are spearheading the training program. "The nurses are developing knowledge, skills, and the confidence to perform at a higher level to improve the outcomes of the patients they serve."

Hôpital Sacrè Coeur, located in Milot, Haiti, is the largest private hospital in the northern half of the small Caribbean island. With 122 beds, it has been treating patients for 30 years and welcomed the first Holy Name volunteers about two decades ago. As more staff and physicians donated their time and services, the hospital started drawing larger number of patients and began making clinical and capital improvements.

In 2012, after a massive earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and destroyed a good deal of the island's infrastructure, more Holy Name volunteers started making regular trips to help care for patients as well as rebuild and replace critical medical equipment. During that year the Medical Center also took over the foundation that funds the hospital and started to help with managing it.

Nathalie Dorcin, the CNO at Hopital Sacre Coeur, and Elise Bellamour, a fellow nurse and midwife, spent last week at Holy Name. Ms. Dorcin said she found that the teaching methods at Holy Name varied widely from those in her native country.

"In Haiti, we're given information that we must read and memorize," Dorcin said. "Here there is role-playing, case studies, and simulation learning. We will definitely implement some of these techniques at home. Although we don't have the equipment and facility that they have here in Holy Name, this week has motivated us and we’ll bring that energy back home with us."