A STAFF REPORT
To the Rescue
Bonnie Castillo, an RN with roots in public health, heads up unique disaster relief program
W
hen typhoon haiyan, known locally as
Yolanda, slammed into the Philippines on
the morning of Nov. 8, many people across
the United States were wrapping up their
workday. But not Bonnie Castillo, RN.
As the director of Registered Nurse
Response Network (RNRN), a project of
National Nurses United that sends nurses around the world to provide
medical care as part of disaster relief efforts, Castillo was busy monitoring the super-storm and already mobilizing staff to start the recruitment of RN volunteers to provide the help that the Philippines would
need. Sure enough, the devastation was beyond what anyone imagined.
Within 24 hours, RNRN had signed up almost 500 RN volunteers
willing to drop everything in their lives and use their own vacation time
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N AT I O N A L N U R S E
to go care for typhoon victims. Within a week, the program had signed
up more than 3,000 nurses willing to make the trip, on top of the
18,000 RNs already on RNRN's rosters. Many of the new recruits were
RNs originally from the Philippines and eager to help their homeland.
"The response is always unbelievable," said Castillo, who has
headed up RNRN since it was formed in 2004 and coordinated
relief efforts for Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, the earthquake in
Haiti, and the tsunami in Southeast Asia. In addition to RNRN,
Castillo is the government relations director for the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee. "Nurses
have an incredible drive to care for others and to help people who
are suffering, no matter the situation or hardship on themselves."
As head of RNRN, Castillo is in a way returning to her original
motivations for becoming a registered nurse: to practice public
W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G
NOVEMBER 2013
