Medical Missions Nurse a Finalist for Award Based on Charity Work

Natalie Harris has traveled to Peru, India and the Philippines on vacation time—but not for vacation.

Harris is a registered nurse. She works three nights a week at Mass General Hospital, on a floor with orthopedic and urology patients.

She also volunteers—and works—at a Woburn-based nonprofit organization, Medical Missions for Children, Inc., that provides medical care around the globe.

Based on her work with MMC, Harris is a regional finalist for one of this year’s Nursing Spectrum magazine’s Nursing Excellence Awards, in the category of community service.

An RN for 10 years, Harris described herself as a “second-career nurse.” She transferred to nursing from managing an environmental toxicology lab because, she explained, she always wanted to do something that impacts people more directly.

After another nurse at MGH talked about Medical Missions for Children, Harris said, “I want to try it.”  MMC missions “have taken me to corners of the world I wanted to see.”

The organization was incorporated in 2000, according to Elizabeth Desmarais, MMC executive director, although medical professionals have been providing the services, Desmarais said, for more than 20 years. MMC focuses on fixing children’s congenital facial deformities, like cleft palate, because the doctors that started the group specialized in that area of medicine, she said.

Harris started as a volunteer with MMC around 2007. Her first mission was to Leyte, in the Philippines, near, she said, where Gen. Douglas MacArthur stayed during World War II.

The MMC team worked in a small rural hospital with two operating rooms that were not in constant use, Harris said, because health care there is so expensive. Mass General has more than 30 operating rooms, she noted.

“You realize they have all the basics,” Harris said, "[but] we have so much.” Sometimes the missions make you catch yourself, she said later, making a move out of habit. It makes you think, “Can I reuse this?”

Harris’ volunteer efforts then blossomed in another direction. She started to volunteer to organize and pack mission supplies. That has become her part-time job: MMC materials manager.

Desmarais nominated Harris for the Spectrum nursing award. In the application, Desmarais recounted how Harris overcame a series of challenges on one particular MMC mission this past January to Phalodi, India.

The challenges started before Harris even left Woburn. Supplies and equipment from a mission returning from Guatemala that were needed for the India trip were missing. Harris tracked down the missing bags of anesthesia equipment and medications.

Traveling with so much baggage—essentially a MASH unit, Desmarais wrote, Harris had to fly out of JFK airport in New York. She rode by van to New York, met another nurse with whom she was to travel.

All their baggage was loaded onto a plane. Then the flight was delayed. The other nurse realized she was too ill to fly for almost 24 hours to India.

Harris tried to get the luggage transferred from the other nurse’s ticket to hers. No dice. She had to disembark, have all the MMC baggage removed from the plane, arrange to store it safely, re-ticket her flight for the next day, retrieve the equipment and supplies and board the flight.

With the delay, Harris arrived in India 12 hours after the rest of the team. Alone, she made her way through customs. When she arrived at a hotel, it would not accept her credit card.

Finally, a driver took her, and all the luggage, to Phalodi where she met the other members of the MMC medical team.

“There was a standing ovation in the hotel lobby,” Harris said.

Teams work intensely during what are usually five-day missions, Harris said.

Sometimes, at the end of a mission, Harris said her family, her husband, Russell Demailly, a surgical technician at Mass General, and her stepdaughter will join her in the mission country for some time together.

MGH is supportive, Harris said, of her requests for time off for a mission.

Her most memorable mission? Harris demurred. It’s like children, she said. Each one is unique.

MMC runs about 15 missions a year, to established sites, according to Desmarais. That schedule may change, she said, based on local weather and politics. One mission in Ecuador was caught in a coup, Desmarais said.

“We always have to be prepared for anything.”

The Spectrum nursing award recipients will be announced in October.