Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas Nurse Headed to Africa to Help Other Nurses

Nurse Lana Borden

In the emergency department at Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas, nurse Lana Borden sees it all. But it's what she saw thousands of miles from here that captured her heart.

"I got to see things from a different perspective," said Borden.

As a teenager she visited Zambia, a small country in southern Africa riddled with poverty.

"I had never seen poverty in such a way," said Borden.

"Places where they did surgery where there was not even electricity or clean running water."

She went there with a singing group and left wanting to help.

"When you can't ice a sprained ankle, what do you do? Things like that I had to really learn," said Borden.

So she enrolled in nursing school while going back to Zambia every summer. Now, more than a decade after she first went there, she's close to earning her Master of Nursing from Western Governors University, all to prepare for her biggest life choice yet - moving to Zambia permanently.

"My goal really is to invest in the nurses themselves and to encourage them to teach those good hygiene skills and all of those things that you do when you go through nursing school," said Borden.

See the full story via KSHB 41.

Learn more about Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas.