view . fall 2010
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Nursing grad Aric Rankin willingly volunteers in places of pain and heartache to help heal.
He is shown at left in Haiti earlier this year.
The victims arrived on the backs of family members
, in
wheelbarrows, or dragged along the ground, with broken femurs,
skull fractures, serious infections and painful burns.
A devastating 7.0-magnitude quake hit Haiti in early 2010 and left
death, devastation and pain in its wake.
Aric Rankin BScN ’05 and his other
volunteers on the Canadian Medical
Assistance Team – first responders
following the earthquake – saw about 300
patients a day during their three-week stay
in Haiti. Their first patient, however, remains
one of his most powerful memories.
A pregnant woman arrived at their
camp in Leogane, the area closest to the
epicentre of the quake, complaining that she couldn’t feel her baby.
Rankin and his team feared the worst.
Six hours later, he says, “We delivered a very healthy baby boy.
It was just a good omen for the weeks to come.”
The story serves as hope in a land where the mortality rate is so
high parents hold off naming their babies for weeks or months.
Hope and humanitarian work have become a hallmark of Rankin’s
early, active years in his nursing career. In addition to the Haiti mission,
he was a volunteer registered nurse at the Tsepong “Place of Hope”
HIV/AIDS clinic in the Kingdom of Lesotho, Africa for four months
in the summer of 2009. He also did his clinical practicum in 2004 in
the Nursing Externship Program in the northwestern Ontario town
of Sioux Lookout, where he cared for the First Nations community.
He has volunteered at an HIV/AIDS camp for adults and
children on Lake Huron and helped out in the bush of Australia. He
has done extensive work with the College of Nurses of Ontario,
Canadian Nursing Students Association and is past-president of the
Middlesex-Elgin chapter of the Registered Nurses Association of
Ontario (RNAO).
For all of that – and more – he will receive an Odyssey Award
this fall from the University of Windsor Alumni Association. It
recognizes alumni who are in the early years of their career for
having distinguished themselves through successes in various
endeavours, notable achievements in their local community or the
university, or through a significant or innovative achievement in
their professional or personal life.
Rankin’s “character and humanitarian work around the world are
wonderful examples of what this award represents,” says Jim Minello,
chair of the Alumni Association’s Awards Committee. “Rankin credits
the learning he enjoyed at the University
of Windsor and the people associated
with this community as being major
influences on his philosophy and
achievements in life.”
Rankin says he had an “excellent
experience” at UWindsor and that its
nursing faculty is “second to none.” He
feels honoured and humbled to receive
the Odyssey Award and says he learned
in July that he also received the UCBeyond Scholarship, awarded to
people with Crohn’s Disease through the Crohn’s & Colitis
Foundation of Canada.
In Africa, he worked at a busy HIV/AIDs clinic in an area that
suffers the third-highest incident rate of the disease on the continent.
Rankin assessed patients, drew blood, triaged, created a manual for
orientation and assisted other nurses in clinical procedures. Months
later, he got the call to go to Haiti.
“I went from one disaster to another.”
The earthquake hit the island January 12, 2010. Four days later,
he was in Haiti. “I had literally 48 hours to make a decision, pack
and be on a plane in Toronto.”
His team set up a mobile clinic in a field between two schools
and went to work. They classified patients through colour codes,
and worked with only a few hours sleep each night, even during
aftershocks that registered 5.3 on the Richter scale.
Rankin remembers inserting an IV into one small child when the
ground shook, comparing it to trying to stay steady on a surfboard.
“It’s the most bizarre feeling that you could ever imagine.”
He works as a full-time RN at Children’s Hospital of London Health
Sciences Centre and is a part-time clinical instructor at University
of Western Ontario School of Nursing. This fall, he begins part-time
nurse practitioner work at UWindsor, commuting from his home in
Hamilton where his wife Michelle Ross works as a teacher.
n
v
“because of my personal
experiences, i tHink tHat i can
better Help otHer people get
tHrougH difficult times.”
ArIc rANkIN BScN ’05
NURSING GRAD
HEALTH CARE
BY PAUL RIGGI
on the front lines of
