Helping others — it’s the reason many nurses chose this career. It’s also what drives many Johns Hopkins nurses to volunteer in their free time. When they’re not giving their all to care for patients and families, nurses across The Johns Hopkins Hospital are giving their time, talents and hearts to help those in need outside of the hospital’s walls.

Eric Leslie, a Lifeline critical care transport nurse, has gone on seven trips as part of Operation Smile, an inter­national medical charity that provides free surgeries to children and young adults in developing countries who are born with cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities. He volunteers to work as a pre- and post-op nurse when they perform the surgeries.

Leslie tries to take two trips with Operation Smile each year and says he has visited countries and experienced cultures he never would have seen oth­erwise. “Even though there’s a language barrier, you still see the gratitude and thanks from the patients and their fami­lies in the interactions you have with them, and you develop these wonderful relationships. They are just so grateful for any help you can give them.”

“It’s a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling that I’m really contributing to making someone’s life better,” Leslie adds. “It brings me back to why I got into nurs­ing in the first place.”

For Michelle Whitfield, giving back is part of who she is, especially when it comes to volunteering in the East Baltimore community where she grew up. She is a proud Dunbar High School graduate and now works as a nurse in the Department of Emergency Medi­cine.

Among her many volunteer activi­ties, Whitfield is the coordinator for the Hopkins-Dunbar Internship Program, which provides Dunbar High School students in their senior year who are interested in pursuing careers in health care the opportunity to work in the Emergency Department.

“I really wanted to do something for the community and for the stu­dents, those who might not have had the opportunities that I received,” says Whitfield.

“In a way, it’s easy work because you get the reward of seeing the gratitude in the students’ faces, you see direct impact on a student throughout the year,” she says.

As a volunteer for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic, Kerri Wojciechowski, a nurse on the Com­prehensive Transplant Unit, helps make the dreams of children diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition come true.

“It’s all about building relationships with these kids, so they will trust you and open up to you, so you can help them figure out, out of anything in the world, anything they can even imagine, what their wish would be.”

Wojciechowski, who has volunteered with Make-A-Wish since 1999, says that seeing the resiliency and strength of these children and their families during such difficult times keeps her motivated to volunteer. “I feel really lucky to be able to do this work and see the smiles on the faces of the Make-A-Wish kids, who realize, this is for me, you’ve done all of this for me,” she says. “To be part of this incredible, positive moment in their lives is really special for me.”