We encourage people to to lend their knowledge, training, or pair of willing hands to our efforts in developing countries.  Southern Wind is built to act as the support base for visiting clinicans, medical students or other volunteers to do aid work.  On this page, Floating Doctors acknowledges the hard work of the people who have joined us in the field–thank you to everyone who worked alongside us. If you are interested in joining with the Floating Doctors during their deployment, please email us.

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Ashleigh Eccles
Occupational Therapist
Toronto, Canada

Ashleigh Eccles is an innovative and creative Occupational Therapist (OT) who comes to us from the wilds of Toronto, Canada. As an OT, Ashleigh works to help individuals develop positive life skills in the face of developmental disabilities that include autism, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and sensory processing difficulties.

Ashleigh is a consultant, educator and published author who possesses both a commitment to accessible healthcare and a passion for adventure. Floating Doctors is a perfect fit for Ashleigh, providing her with the opportunity to travel to new countries and a chance to use her skills to address health issues in underserviced areas.

Seeking to tackle global health issues head on, in the most direct way possible, she welcomes the chance to contribute her skills and experience to this multidisciplinary, multinational and multicultural team. An enthusiastic supporter of interprofessional collaboration as one of the innovative approaches to addressing health issues in underserviced areas, Ashleigh is proud to be able to help.

Nick is 27 years old and was born in Minnesota, moving to California when he was 12.  He served in the U.S. ARMY as a scout in the Cavalry and was qualified as a Combat Life Saver, learning how to dress wounds and treat patients in various trauma situations. After his military service, Nick worked as a Ski Patroller in Big Bear Lake, CA, where he practiced rapid response to a wide variety of injuries (often occurring on hard-to-reach parts of the mountain) and patient stabilization and transport over challenging terrain.

He has training in First Aid/ CPR, Basic Healthcare Providing, and is qualified as a First Responder for the Professional Rescuer. He is an EMT and has spent time in his local E.R., training in primary and secondary assessments of individuals with a variety of medical problems (such as respiratory or heart complications), ECG/EKG interpretation, and has recently finished training in phlebotomy.

Nick also plays guitar and bass and is learning to play the harmonica; one of his hopes for this mission is to explore the many ways music can connect people around the world, no matter what economic, ethnic,
religious, language or geographical barriers seem to separate them. As one of the early members of Floating Doctors—with the crew from its first days in Florida rebuilding Southern Wind all the way to Haiti—his company and music are greatly missed.

Read his blog http://www.Nwansten.Wordpress.com

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Ryan Emberly
Land-Based Support Captain
Toronto, Canada

Captain Ryan was born with the sea in his blood; his father and grandfather before him were watermen and the line runs true in Ryan—never happier than at the helm of a ship with the sails up and the horizon within reach. He holds a 200-ton USCG Captain’s license and has accumulated over 1200 days of sea time operating research vessels in the Caribbean. Additionally, he and his wife Morgan (and their faithful boat dog Rudder) cruised their 30’ Irwin sailboat for three years in the East Caribbean. West Marine in Jacksonville, FL was kind enough to grant Ryan leave to help us finish repairs to Southern Wind and to Captain her on our maiden voyage from Palm Coast to St. Augistine, and then to Lake Worth before our jump-off to Haiti. Since returning to land, he is always available to lend his knowledge and expertise over the phone or by email to help guide us safely during our voyage, as well as sending us detailed weather routing information to keep our offshore navigation as safe as possible.

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Martin Rofael
EMT
Bay Area, CA

Martin Rofael is a spontaneous, energetic 21-year-old native Egyptian who has lived in the Bay Area region of California since moving to America at the age of 7. He is a recent graduate of San Francisco State University with a BS in Physiology and a minor in Chemistry. He currently works as an EMT for American Medical Response in the northern California county of San Mateo, where he also lives with his parents and older brother.

Growing up in poverty has given Martin a heart for the underserved and this has fueled his desire to seek social justice. As a result, he has traveled to the Dominican Republic to work with a traveling clinic to administer rural health care. In San Francisco, Martin has worked with the homeless population to help provide food and shelter to those in need. He also worked in a hospital in a slum garbage village in Cairo in 2007 where he witnessed urban poverty unlike any he had seen before. He has chosen to combine his love for medicine with his desire to bring healthcare to underserved communities like those he has visited.

Martin is currently applying to med schools and has joined the Floating Doctors in Honduras to learn, work with communities with little access to care and make a positive difference in the lives of people in developing communities. He aims to also better his Spanish so it can join Arabic and English as his fluent third language. Martin hopes to make his family proud and use his previous experiences and languages to travel the world providing health care.

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Annee Deering
Master Degree in Nursing
Davis, CA

Annee Deering is a newly minted nurse from Northern California. In June, she completed her Masters degree in Clinical Nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her BA in Environmental Studies from Mills College in 2006. She is joining up with Floating Doctors for a couple of months before beginning a job in the Intensive Care Unit at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

Annee’s unique skill set encompasses experiences in adventure travel, social justice advocacy, and various types of international health aid work. She has ten years of whitewater rafting experience rowing boats on multi-week river trips through California, Idaho, and Arizona. Annee also brings with her a multifaceted depth of understanding surrounding both health education and environmental conservation. During her undergraduate studies she participated in ecology and genetics research for the University of California. In 2006, Annee developed her passion for the nursing profession during a study abroad program visiting South America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. Before starting at UCLA she spent four months on a self-contained 3,500 mile cycling trip to raise publicity and funds for the non-profit group CommuniCare Health Centers, located in her hometown of Davis, California.

Despite a profound sense of wanderlust, Annee is also an accomplished endurance athlete. For the last two years she has trained with the UCLA Triathlon Team and the Los Angeles Triathlon Club, and is currently preparing for her first Ironman while on location in Honduras.  In addition, Annee is awaiting publication of some of her literature review research conducted during graduate school. In the coming years she seeks to incorporate provision of nursing care and physical activity education by way of bicycle touring trips through rural areas of the United States.  For her, Floating with the Doctors is just the beginning…

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Sirin Petch
Nurse and EMBS/BLS/CPR Instructor
Los Angeles, CA

Sirin Petch is a 26-year-old recent graduate from the UCLA School of Nursing’s Master’s Entry-level program, who is looking to create a place for herself in the world of medical aid work. Her background previously focused on emergency care; she has worked as an EMT for McCormick ambulance in Los Angeles County, a trauma technician for the UCLA Emergency Department, and is currently employed as an EMS/BLS/CPR instructor for the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care. Her nursing education has provided her with good assessment skills and important tools to understand and improve health systems.

Sirin is a huge fan of learning and experiencing new things. Throughout her undergraduate studies in Physiological Sciences, she joined charitable organizations such as Mobile Clinic and UniCamp, where she first realized she wanted to continue working with underprivileged populations throughout her career. She has also previously traveled to Honduras with the Global Medical Brigades where she improved her Spanish and developed a taste for working with underdeveloped international clinics.

Born and raised in Southern California, Sirin has found that her life’s work and interests have led her to incredible friends, medicine, and the potential for great adventures to come. She hopes to one day achieve positive change in the quality of lives for those in less fortunate circumstances, and to make her loving parents and three little sisters proud.

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Tom Cotter
Emergency Medical Technician

Tom Cotter cut his teeth on international medical relief in February after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.  After a week of using his training as an EMT to see 80 patients a day in a tent outside the Henri Desgranges Clinic, he returned to the states to finish his studies.  Concentrating in Public and Community Service Studies, Tom has spent his college career amongst the underserved, delivering and assisting with the delivery of healthcare.

In May 2010, Tom received his BA in Public and Community Service Studies with a concentration in Pre-Medical sciences and immediately boarded a plane back to Haiti, four days after receiving his diploma. Teaming up with the Floating Doctors in Petit-Goave, Tom has been valuable as a triage technician, using his rudimentary knowledge of Haitian Creole to tease out symptoms for Dr. Ben to diagnose and treat, as well as helping stabilize and treat patients presenting directly to Southern Wind while at anchor.  His experience as an EMT lends itself to the many emergencies presented to the Floating Doctors- both medical problems and traumatic injuries. Tom hopes to attend medical school in the fall of 2011 in order to pursue a career in international medicine.

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Madeleine Gygli (Maddie)

Madeleine Gygli  (Maddie)  has been an educator for the past 11 years. She received her BS in Psychobiology  from UCLA and her MA in Educational Administration from CSUN.  She has taught students at both the high school and elementary levels.  She is knowledgeable at differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all her students which have included students with special needs, English Language Learners, as well as gifted students.  Her bilingual abilities have proven to be vital, as her current school is located in the heart of South Central Los Angeles  where 70% of the student population is made up of Latino students with the other 30% being African American.  Her current administrative position has enabled her to provide Professional Development opportunities both at her school site and at the district level.  She is also consistently working with parents to further their educational knowledge-base in order to better help their children succeed.  Maddie is excited to be able to utilize her fluent Spanish and educational background to assist the Floating Doctors in better communicating with their clinic patients and providing health education in the process.

Maddie has made two trips to volunteer with Floating Doctors; once in the summer of 2009 to help with the rebuilding of Southern Wind in Florida, and in July-August of 2010 in Honduras where her translating and teaching experience has been instrumental in working with Sirin to create Spanish Language educational materials and lessons for the EMS courses provided to the local Fire Department.