Dr. Naomi Florea Awarded Spiritual Life Service Award
Bringing her vibrant faith in God to her students and hundreds of indigent Romania patients through mission service.
by Stephen Vodhanel, PhDNaomi Florea, Pharm.D., specializes in infectious diseases for the School of Pharmacy. Dr. Florea is considered to be one of the best lecturers, winning teacher of the year multiple times. Now, Dr. Florea is becoming known for something else: bringing her vibrant faith
in God to her students and hundreds of indigent Romania patients through mission service. Dr. Florea began by offering an elective course called International Mission Preparation. This course focuses on physical assessment and the many disease states the students will encounter once in rural Romania, where the majority of people have no health care. Dr. Florea then takes a group of 15 students to Romania every August where they spend 12 hours a day in various rural clinics to teat the local populace.
What does it look like to bring hope and meaning in the midst of healthcare challenges in a nation where health insurance is almost non-existent and the use of bribes has become one method for obtaining an access to health care?
Michael Nguyen, PY3 student and Romania trip alum said, “Dr. Florea makes herself vulnerable to her patients and invest all of herself into helping them. In the face of such compassion, how could one not see the face of Christ?” Anastacia Chetty, PY3 student and Romainia trip alum said, “Dr. Florea made sure each and every clinic started with a word of prayer. When patients laugh, she laughs. When they cry, she cries. Above all else she imparts to them the love of God in the way she holistically treats her patients. I am so grateful to God for putting Dr. Florea in our lives.”
The School of Pharmacy is proud of the experience in the medical mission field that Dr. Florea extends to pharmacy students, especially in Romania where the country’s health care systems compares more with that of third-world countries than the countries of Western Europe.