An occupational therapist, Erika Lezama left Venezuela for Perú with the expectation that she could continue to practice her profession. Having overcome more than a few bumps in her road, she finally landed what she thought would be the job of her dreams at a children’s therapy center located in the most exclusive area of Lima. The challenging experience made her realize the kind of professional she wanted to be.

María Laura Silva always wanted to be a doctor. She was presented with many an obstacle as a student of medicine, some of them posed by the crisis facing the country, but that didn’t undermine her determination to graduate.  Still, one day in 2018, while at work as a medical intern at a hospital, she began to ask herself whether she should stay the course.

A pioneer in Venezuela in the use of immunohistochemistry —a method that allows for more accurate results in diagnostic pathology—, Dr. Jorge García Tamayo devoted six decades of his life to research and teaching. One day, he invited Elsie Picott, at the time a resident student of Universidad Central de Venezuela Anatomic Pathology Graduate Program, to join him in a research work. She has since considered him her mentor. Twenty years later, she stills asks him for advice, which he delivers, even from afar.

Simple things such as receiving quality care, words of encouragement or a hug can mean the world to patients. That’s what Rubén Darío Carrero learned when he was just starting practicing as a physician. This is his account of the stressful and moving experience behind this reflection.

A medical doctor decides to donate a kidney to her sister to spare her from the grueling routine of dialysis treatment. This is the story of a transplant, an operation that many people in Venezuela can no longer opt for because on June 1, 2017 the Venezuelan Foundation for Organ, Tissue and Cell Donation and Transplantation (Fundavene), a body attached to the Ministry of Health, suspended the organ procurement and transplantation program.

Two Venezuelan medical doctors who graduated from the Universidad de Oriente reunite in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They start dating and eventually move in together. With the outbreak of the pandemic, they work grueling weeks and are exposed to high levels of stress.

In March of 2021, following a year of confinement due to the pandemic, dentist and university professor Francys Viaña traveled to Panama in the company of her teenage twins and her sister. Once there, she began to feel under the weather. She tested positive for COVID-19. From that moment on, what she had planned as a short vacation turned into a vertiginous and harrowing experience.

A kid who feels singled out because he is different. A kid who prefers to hang out with adults and who loves to read books and listen to the radio. A kid who is hypersensitive to many things around him. A kid who is labeled as a smarty-pants and whose behavior is considered as imprudent. Following a late diagnosis, surgeon Björn Martíinez delves into his memories to piece together the puzzle that is his own world.

Adriana García is an obstetrician-gynecologist. When her cousin, whom she loved like a sister, told her she was expecting, Adriana was overjoyed. The pregnancy seemed to be progressing well, but when she entered her fifth month, the doctors found out that the baby was carrying several congenital anomalies. Adriana, aware of what that diagnosis meant, wished she did not know the things she knew, for they began to feel like a burden on her shoulders.

When she learned that she was pregnant with her second child, María Gabriela Chalbaud knew that she had to do something to make more money because what she earned as a university professor was no longer enough. So, she and her friend Yanet Calderón decided to act upon an idea she had for a very singular undertaking: they would become the substitute daughters of many Venezuelans who had left their parents and grandparents behind when they migrated.