What is Nursing like on Mercy Ships?

The hum of Africana music drifts through the air, a rhythmic melody that seems to pulse with the very heartbeat of the ship. It fills every corner of the ward, blending seamlessly with the laughter, the clapping, the joyful shouts of patients and caregivers alike. Their voices rise above the beeping monitors and the rustle of nurses moving through the room, a harmony of hope, resilience, and celebration.

Patients are dancing, singing, and laughing, their joy spilling over like sunlight after a long storm. Their energy defies the usual image of a hospital, there are no hushed whispers of sickness, no sterile silence, no weight of despair hanging in the air. Instead, there is life. There is movement. There is joy, in its purest form.

I stand in the middle of it all, watching, smiling, taking it in, because nursing on The Global Mercy is like nothing I have ever experienced before.

Here, healing is not just found in IV drips and sutures, in medication rounds and post-op care. It is found in veranda time with patients, where we sit in the warm embrace of the African sun, swapping stories and watching the ocean stretch endlessly beyond the ship’s railing. It is found in dance parties in the ward, where patients who once arrived weighed down by suffering now twirl with uncontained joy, their hands reaching toward the sky, their feet moving in rhythms passed down through generations.

Healing is found in spirited games of Uno and Connect Four, where competition is fierce and laughter is louder than any medical alarm. It’s in the conversations that unfold naturally between shifts, with patients, with caregivers, with the local day crew, each story a glimpse into the beautiful, complicated, resilient lives lived in Sierra Leone.

It is in the friendships formed among nurses, the ones that feel like family by the end of it all. We bond over the long shifts, the unexpected challenges, the moments that leave us breathless with laughter, and the ones that bring us to tears. We share the weight of this work, the heartbreak, the triumph, the exhaustion, and the overwhelming beauty of what it means to serve here, in this sacred space, on this floating hospital of hope.

This is not just another hospital. This is not just another shift. This is a calling. A privilege. A front-row seat to hope being restored, to lives being changed, to miracles unfolding in real-time.

Imagine a hospital where nurses only stay for a couple of months. An operating room where the surgeons change every week. A surgical team made up of nurses and doctors from six different countries. A ward filled with volunteer nurses, each speaking a different language, each with a different scope of practice. Patients who speak at least five different dialects, their voices carrying the weight of stories untold. You would think I was crazy. You would say, “No way. That could never work.” And yet, it does. It works in a way that no other hospital I have ever worked in does.

Why? How? Because we are all volunteers. We are not here for money, or promotions, or because we have to be. We are here because we want to be. Every single person I have worked with, from the surgeons to the nurses to the cleaning staff, has been overflowing with kindness, love, and compassion. The teamwork here is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Despite our different languages, our different countries, our different ways of doing things, we come together with one mission, one purpose: to bring hope and healing. And that kind of unity? That kind of selfless care? It changes everything.

But if I could tell you about the heart of Mercy Ships, I wouldn’t start with the nurses, or the surgeons, or even the ship itself. I would tell you about the patients. I can’t explain to you what it’s like to work with them, their stories, both heartbreaking and inspiring, their courage in the face of unimaginable suffering. They travel from faraway villages carrying nothing but hope. They come with conditions that should have been treated long ago, conditions that in other parts of the world would have been caught in infancy, fixed before they ever became life-altering. They come with massive tumors, ones that have grown so large they have overtaken their faces, making them unrecognizable even to themselves. They come with twisted limbs, their bones bent in ways that have made walking impossible. They come with scars from burns, skin fused together in painful reminders of accidents that could not be treated in time.

And yet, they come. They come despite the whispered fears in their villages, fears that tell that they might leave worse than when they arrived. They come because hope is a force greater than fear. And when they step aboard this ship, when they are greeted not just with medicine, but with love, something shifts.

I have watched transformations unfold that cannot be put into words. I have watched once-guarded faces soften into smiles. I have watched hunched shoulders straighten with newfound confidence. I have watched eyes that once held only uncertainty now shine with hope. Because healing here goes far beyond the physical.

Yes, we remove tumors. Yes, we straighten bones. Yes, we treat scars. But the real healing, the one that leaves me speechless, is the healing of the heart, the spirit, the dignity of the people we serve. I have held the hands of patients who have been shunned by their communities, only to see those same people welcomed back home after surgery. I have heard the laughter of a child who had never walked on straight legs before take their first steps. I have wept as a young woman, once afraid to even meet my eyes, looked at herself in a mirror for the first time in years, and smiled.

This is not just nursing. This is a life-changing, soul-shaping, faith-deepening kind of nursing. The kind that reminds you why you started. The kind that breaks your heart and rebuilds it stronger. The kind that teaches you that healing is so much more than medicine.

So if you read this and feel a calling in your heart, a desire to try a different kind of nursing take a leap of faith and come volunteer with me onboard Mercy Ships.