Ruth Bindler ’01 PhD grew up in the Adirondacks of New York. In the 1960s, when she started college at Cornell, the typical paths for women were teaching and nursing. Since she enjoyed her science classes, nursing seemed a logical route. Turned out it was a great fit. After working for a time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, she moved to Wisconsin with Julian Bindler, who later became her husband, and found both nursing work and graduate school.
Bindler not only went on to become a successful public health nurse, she authored several books on children’s health and medication, was a … » More …
On the quirky comedy Northern Exposure, an isolated Alaskan town enticed a New York City doctor to become the community’s physician. While the city doc’s angst and the eccentric residents—including a moose from WSU—drew laughs, the show highlighted a real challenge faced by many small towns and rural areas: recruiting and retaining doctors and nurses.
“There’s a shortage of all health care providers: physicians, nurses, all of the technical programs,” says Gary Smith, a senior project associate with the Area Health Education Center (AHEC) of eastern Washington. “The demand will increase even more when the economy turns around and people want … » More …
In summer 2004 my husband, Stuart, and I made our first trip to Peru. We traveled with a charitable organization that hoped to build an orphanage and medical clinic there. Having completed my second semester of nursing studies at the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing, I was the most medical-savvy person on the trip. But that didn’t stop us from doing a lot of good work. We set up clinics in Iquitos, a port city of about 400,000 residents near the headwaters of the Amazon River, and worked farther downriver in less populated areas with the Yahua and Bora Indian tribes. We were … » More …
During those long, hot, humid, and exhausting days, we saw, experienced, and accomplished things we had never before imagined possible.
We were a team, 24 strong, who came together for 10 days in the early spring of 2005 to travel to Honduras. We were nurses, physicians, dentists, dental hygienists and assistants, optometrists, and support personnel on a mission to provide medical, dental, and eye care to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it.
Our way was carefully prepared for us by an advance team of in-country personnel who work with Worldwide Heart-to-Heart Ministries, our mission sponsors. We flew into the city of San Pedro … » More …