Nurses rank among one of the most important professions around the world.

They are tasked with attending to the injured and the ill along side doctors, but what if those caretakers are suffering from poor health themselves?

On March 29, 14 Dowagiac residents embarked on a 10-day mission trip to the Episcopal University of Haiti School of Nursing in Leogane, Haiti, 20 miles west of the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince. The school, co-founded by an Ann Arbor nursing emeritus professor, sought the support and guidance of Jim Wierman, the chief of staff at Borgess-Lee Medical Center.

Along with his wife, Denise, and fellow doctors from Dowagiac, the group spent long days performing check-ups on the nursing students, which included eye, dental and overall health exams.

“There is a terrible shortage of nurses in Haiti,” Wierman said. “All my efforts in Haiti have been a team approach; you have to have a team with you because the need is so great.”

Wierman has been doing medical aid work in Haiti since 1967, when he first visited the poverty-stricken country as a senior medical student. While many U.S. residents associate Haiti’s poverty with the devastation of 2010’s earthquake, Wierman said the country has been living in poverty long before the natural disaster.

“Something like the earthquake brings notoriety to Haiti’s poverty,” Wierman said. “But after a while, the majority of the interest wanes, and you’re back to where you started.”

After the earthquake leveled the university’s cathedral, where the first nursing class graduated in 2008, the school was found still standing with a few cracks in the foundation. Since then, Wierman, his wife and various other invested individuals have continued their trips to Haiti, helping nurses improve their health, which in turn improves their studies. Wierman will take another trip to Leogane in October for the 2012 graduation ceremony.

“The class will be a bit smaller,” Wierman said. “Four nursing students died in the earthquake, and some just couldn’t come back, but we’re continuing.”

During the initial health exams, Wierman said the students were living with ailments that greatly reduced their quality of life.

“We found several of the students to be anemic; some profoundly so. Others had never had dental or eye exams, so we did those, also.”

Along with Wierman and his wife, Dowagiac residents and medical professionals lent their helping hand in anyway they could. Matt Cripe, with his wife, Beth, and their daughter, Maggie, performed dental exams and cleanings with Chuck Burling. Fred Mathews, with his wife, Thelda, conducted eye exams. Other volunteers, including Franca Weitenberner, Ron Gunn, Tom Dalton, Judge Sue Dobrich and John and Nancy Vylonis, assisted in lab work, blood sampling, lectures on domestic violence and civil rights and setting up a soccer field for exercise.

“We gave the students a year supply of iron and other medications to improve their general health,” Wierman said. “It changes your life, seeing Haiti and their people. Against all obstacles, they still succeed.”

About 110 nursing students received eye exams. Mathews also examined more than 35 locals from a church in Leogane, as well as the school’s staff and administration.

“We worked with what we had available,” Mathews said. “I wrote prescriptions for those students who needed glasses and Smoke Vision (in Dowagiac) made the glasses, which were taken back with the school’s dean.”

Mathews also instructed several of the students on proper reading habits, such as holding the material away from their eyes at least 16 inches and reading in good lighting when it’s available.

“The electricity there never stayed on consistently, so we’d have to go outside and just keep working,” Mathews said.

Matt Cripe said he knew what to expect since the trip was his third. But Beth and Maggie had never been to Haiti before, and the experience was eye-opening.

“It is such a different world,” Cripe said. “But we walked away feeling good that we actually helped someone who truly needed it.”

Members of the group said they were impressed by the resilience of the Haitian people.

“I didn’t know what to expect with this trip,” Gunn, who helped set up the soccer field, said. “I was going down to help them, and they ended up helping me. They give you a boost.”

Vylonis agreed, saying it was rewarding just to help.

“Everyone is so thankful,” Vylonis said.

Wierman said helping the nursing students turned out to reach farther than they expected.

“Helping these students, it’s an ongoing effort,” Wierman said. “But by helping them, we’re turning out people who will help others for the rest of their lives.”

In all his years of service in Haiti, Wierman said he is still awed by the people.

“Haitians move on because they have to; they have no choice,” he said. “It’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen in humans.”