“This was what I was meant to do”
Helping people has always been a passion for Jemma Berwick, who has been a nurse for 11 years.
But her UK-MED work could hardly be more different from her day job as a paediatric nurse in Oxford.
“I work on a surgical day-case unit, so I’m usually taking kids to the operating theatre and looking after them when they come back,” Jemma explains.
“I really love it, but after doing a course in humanitarian work and tropical diseases, I volunteered as a nurse in Malawi. As soon as I got there, I knew this was what I was meant to do.”
Jemma signed up to help with UK-MED soon after and, like all their volunteers, she has undertaken a number of their training courses.
The most recent, in Sussex, was a hostile environment course, intended to prepare volunteers for some of the real-life scenarios they could face abroad.
“It was things like car hijackings or being taken hostage,” Jemma says. “It was noisy and chaotic, just like you might really encounter.
“It was quite scary, but I felt like it did prepare me should anything happen.”
Last year was a busy one for Jemma, who was deployed to help after the collapse of two dams led to catastrophic flooding in Libya, and to Turkey in the aftermath of an earthquake that killed thousands.
“It was very harrowing, being surrounded by collapsed buildings, ruined roads and people living in tents,” Jemma adds. “I was in a little paediatric tent alongside a doctor, and we saw all sort of cases, like burns and broken bones.
“It’s so heart-warming when you treat a child who is in medical trouble, turn it around, give them a little cuddle and send them off with their parents.
“While it’s always a bit surreal when I get back to work in Oxford, it makes me appreciate what we’ve got.” ■