Finding a mission trip can be difficult, but if you’re a nurse called to go on a mission trip, know that there are opportunities for you to bring your skills to the table, in a way that saves lives both physically and spiritually.
What do nurses do on mission trips? Nurses on mission trips go all over the world, helping and healing people through their medical knowledge. They work with missionaries, local ministries, and other medical professionals to ensure that they provide care for people’s physical and spiritual health.
Here are the best mission trips for nurses:
- Samaritan’s Purse World Medical Mission Trips
- International Volunteer HQ’s Medical Volunteer Abroad Program
- Medico Mission Trips
- Project Hope Mission Trips
- Global Health Outreach Trips
- Mission Of Hope Trips
- ABWE International Mission Trip To Southwest Asia
- Medical Missions Outreach Trips
- Mission To The World Trips
- Medical Missionaries Trips
On each one of these trips, nurses will learn how to relate and care for patients in different cultures and use their passions for healthcare as a way to point people to the love that Jesus has for them.
1. Samaritan’s Purse World Medical Mission Trips
Samaritans Purse has multiple trips each year for registered nurses and other medical professionals. These trips range from being 1-4 weeks for most nurses and each trip is based at a hospital in different countries.
Locations for these hospitals and places to serve include:
- Lebama, Gabon
- Egbe, Nigeria
- Galmi, Niger
- Curahuasi, Peru
- Balfate, Honduras
- Mango, Togo
- San Benito, Peten, Guatemala
- Rio Viejo, Atlantida, Honduras
- Kapsowar, Kenya
- Mt. Darwin, Zimbabwe
- Malumghat, Bangladesh
- Nkhoma, Malawi
- Santiago Texacuangos, El Salvador
Other locations include working on a medical riverboat in Bolivia, in jungle hospitals in Honduras, and even going to restricted-access countries.
All locations have different needs and various spiritual climates, but at each location, there are missionaries on staff who partner with Samaritan’s purse who will encourage you and help you to heal people for Jesus no matter what.
By acting on their beliefs and submerging their volunteers into the location’s culture, Samaritan’s Purse is following the call of the great commission by believing that real medicine starts with real relationships.
They not only know this, but they live it out and search for every opportunity to love people as Jesus would by providing the best care available, both medically and spiritually.
If you want to learn more about how to serve as a nurse with Samaritan’s Purse on one of their World Medical Mission Trips, click here.
2. International Volunteer HQ’s Medical Volunteer Abroad Programs
The unique thing about the International Volunteer HQ’s (IVHQ) medical abroad program, is they allow volunteers of all skill sets to join their teams all around the world.
From high schoolers who aspire to be nurses to college students and professionals, IVHQ brings medical transformation to their 15 sites each and every year.
These sites are:
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Cordoba, Argentina
- Cambodia
- Ghana
- Manual Antonio, Costa Rica
- San Jose, Costa Rica
- Guatemala
- Cusco, Peru
- Lima, Peru
- Delhi, India
- Kerala, India
- Nepal
- Sri Lanka
- Vietnam
- Tanzania
- Zambia
Not only does IVHQ encourage you to use your gifts to serve others, but they also encourage all different health professionals to work together as a team and learn from each other.
If you’d like to learn more about IVHQ and their Medical Volunteer Abroad programs, click here.
3. Medico Mission Trips
Medico is an organization that not only provides healthcare to people in Central and South America but also provides healthcare education to communities.
This way, even once participants of Medico trips go back home, families and doctors will be able to care for each other properly.
Medico mission trips usually last from 7-10 days and costs around $1,050 for each participant. Participants can serve in either Honduras or Nicaragua and work with and in clinics that Medico has established in remote villages across the two countries.
One thing that sets Medico apart is that they allow participants to bring their sons or daughters aged 15 and above along with them. This way, nurses and their kids can experience learning how to serve people and share the gospel together.
To learn more about the unique trips you can take as a nurse with Medico, click here.
4. Project Hope Mission Trips
Project Hope’s goal is to make a long-term impact through life-changing medications, vaccines, and health education in the lives of people all around the world.
With over 35 land bases in different countries, nurses who partner with Project Hope get the chance to board the SS Hope, a medical ship, which carries supplies to these countries that are in hard-to-access places.
Not all trips are via boat, however, and include helping and healing people in these places:
- China
- Africa
- Central Asia
- Southeast Asia
- Central and Eastern Europe
- The Middle East
- The Americas
One of Project Hope’s ways of making a lasting impact in their locations is not only giving people a fish but teaching them how to fish. They want to make sure that when they leave, people don’t just learn how to survive, but how to thrive.
This means that as a nurse or other health care worker with Project Hope, you’ll be able to not only practice medicine, but also practice innovative problem-solving in tough locations, where people will later get to build on your skills, teaching, and solutions.
In this way, you’ll be able to help train others in your skills and work alongside other doctors, nurses, and health specialists to ensure that the community you visit has the best chance for sustainable healthcare.
If you’re early on in your training, don’t worry, Project Hope also trains nurses and even midwives on the field, helping them grow in their knowledge of both medicine and how to love and care for others.
Volunteering as a professional nurse on a trip with Project Hope means that you can spend anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months learning, helping, and training in any of the above locations.
If you’re looking for a specific trip length, you’ll be sure to find one that works for you.
If you’d like to find the trip that works for you or learn more about Project Hope, click here.
5. Global Health Outreach Trips
With their goal to change hearts through healthcare, Global Health Outreach (GHO) provides medical and dental care for those who need it most.
Each year, GHO partners Christian nurses to over 55 countries on trips that last one to two weeks and cost between $2,300 and $4,300, depending on the trip.
GHO trips are located in these places and more:
- India
- East Africa
- Central and South America
- Central Asia
- The Middle East
- Eastern Europe
On their trips, GHO not only leads their participants to bring healing to those in a hospital bed, but also to those in orphanages, refugee camps, and prisons.
With each bandage and kind word, GHO trips allow nurses volunteering with them to get to know the people they are serving and work with other doctors and missionaries already established in your trip’s location.
Nurses with GHO also get to point people’s hearts to Jesus all the while using their skills to make a difference in some of the darkest places in the world.
To reach those most desperate, GHO takes their health care specialists to unreached people groups, where they have the incredible and rare opportunity to share the gospel with people who have never heard about Jesus before and provide medicines and medical treatments to people who may have never had access to them before.
For those who are still students and for those who want to bring their family along, GHO also has student and family friendly trips that could change you, the way you study, and your families.
To learn more about Global Health Outreach and their mission trips for nurses, click here.
6. Mission Of Hope Trips
Mission of Hope believes that as they share the gospel alongside their medical work, lives will be changed. In this life-changing work, nurses and other medical professionals get to build relationships with their patients and offer to pray for them.
Nurses with Mission of Hope can choose between there locations to serve and share their skills:
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Dominican Republic
Nurses get the opportunity to work with local churches, pastors, and long term health care missionaries in these locations, which makes for a perfect environment to grow in your faith and practice.
Trips with Mission of Hope go on year-round, with slots available to sign up yourself as an individual or with a group for any week in the year.
To sign up or to learn more about Mission of Hope and their medical mission trips, click here.
7. ABWE International Mission Trip To Southwest Asia
ABWE International is the Association of Baptists for World Evangelization, and offers a trip to Southwest Asia for registered nurses.
The trip’s length starts at 2 months with the option of staying for a full year. While at a hospital in Southwest Asia, nurses will work with a team of medical professionals and missionaries.
You’ll be working in an area that is predominantly Muslim, but if you’re unsure of your abilities, ABWE offers training courses to help grow you in your spiritual gifts and decipher God’s call to missions in your life.
There are endless needs at this hospital in Southwest Asia, however, there is a far greater opportunity for life-changing impact with your help as being the hands and feet of Jesus.
ABWE also partners with donors and sending organizations to make sure that you get funded for your trip and sent on your way with financial and spiritual backing.
To learn more about how you can use your nursing skills with ABWE International, click here.
8. Medical Missions Outreach Trips
In everything they do, Medical Missions Outreach (MMO) points the people they serve to the Great Physician, Jesus.
One way they do this, is making trips where registered nurses and other medical professionals can spend 7-10 days serving people through medicine and missions.
Each year, MMO launches new trips and reoccurring ones that go to these locations and more:
- El Salvador
- Honduras
- Philippines
- Panama
- Dominica
- Peru
- Kenya
- Chile
- Nicaragua
- Galapagos Islands
- Romania
- Thailand
- Tanzania
- South Africa
- Ethiopia
- Zambia
These trips cost anywhere from $1,750 to $3,295 depending on where you’re going, but the impact is priceless.
On their website, MMO talks about how teams going to some locations may be able to work with church planters. This means that nurses can spread the gospel by building trust with communities through medicine, so that churches may be built and grow in those communities.
MMO also lets nursing students and other medical students join their trips, and they offer an exclusive 6-12 week internship for students who want to learn more about using medicine as an instrument for missions.
With further medical and missional training, interns get to learn how to sustain growth and healing once trip participants leave and learn how missionaries approach medical work on the field.
This internship could be a great opportunity if you’re a student wanting to turn your nursing degree into a career for reaching the lost.
MMO also has many trip resources where nurses getting ready for the field can read up on what to expect, what to pack, and get help with fundraising for their trip.
Overall, MMO is a well-organized organization that is dedicated to helping you use your nursing and medical skills to help people all over the world.
To learn more about Medical Missions Outreach and the trips you can get involved in, click here.
9. Mission To The World Trips
Mission to the World offers various year-round trips for nurses and medical professionals, each one ranging from anywhere to 1-11 months, as well as a longer-term trip of 2-4 years.
Nurses who attend these trips will be working alongside medical care providers, counselors, and administrators to serve unreached people groups, orphans, and others all over the world.
Some of the places to serve around the world are:
- Belize
- Honduras
- Peru
- Africa
- Cambodia
- South Asia
- Europe
If you don’t see a country you’re interested in, don’t worry. Mission to the World offers the unique opportunity for you as a nurse to work with a team in parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe to pioneer new locations and clinics.
This type of work requires a longer trip length but is worth it for the incredibly rare and impactful opportunity you could take to network with other medical professionals and ministries across the globe.
Doing this, you could be a part of creating a lasting impact that allows trips ahead of you to work in places of the world where they couldn’t before.
Other short term trips available allow for you to partner with local churches and physicians in order to share with people the hope of not only getting physically well but also getting spiritually well too.
To learn more about how you can get involved in trips with Mission to the World, click here.
10. Medical Missionaries Trips
Medical Missionaries recruit and train medical volunteers to help the poorest of the poor through these types of mission work:
- Medical Disaster Relief
- Transporting Medical Supplies
- Working In Clinics
Some areas where this medical mission work takes place include:
- The United States
- Haiti
- Africa
- The Middle East
- The Caribbean
With Medical Missionaries, not only will you be able to treat patients and learn and grow yourself, but you’ll also be able to partner with local clinics and help their leaders establish new and better medical facilities in needy locations.
This way, you’ll be making a lasting impact and improve the well being of the locals. You’ll also be able to share your faith with your patients and show them the love of Jesus by simply telling them the purpose of your being there.
Medical Missionaries especially focus on children and infant health, caring for the malnourished in their Haiti location.
For more information about their trips and how to volunteer on one, Medical Missionaries advises you to contact them on their website, which you can find here.
Mission Trips For Nurses Make A Difference
Jesus is the great physician after all, and the Holy Spirit is our helper, so when Christians show up in every field of science and medicine in any country, they can make a difference in people’s lives by showing them the healing love of Jesus.
Knowing this, we also have to remember that even if nurses heal every person they lay their hands on, without Jesus and without the gospel, nothing will make a lasting impact.
Ultimately, the biggest illness people need healing from is their sin, so when nurses intertwine their work for the gospel, that is when true kingdom transformation happens.
To find more medical mission trips, click here.
That’s why finding the best mission trips for nurses is so important, and that’s why no matter where God calls you, know you can use everything for His glory and the healing of others, both physically and spiritually.
