When Haiti was struck by a catastrophic hurricane in 2010, locals took shelter in a small hospital near the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. The hospital had been planned and built years earlier by a team that included Trevecca alumnus Eric Dickenson, a physician assistant who believes deeply in making life-saving care accessible to all people.
“It was a base camp for people fleeing with all kinds of injuries. There were even helicopters flying patients in,” Dickenson said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is what God intended this hospital for.’”
Dickenson first began taking short-term mission trips to Haiti in 2001, working alongside doctors who performed life-saving heart surgeries for some of the region’s poorest children.
“Children dying from congenital heart disease is 100 times more prevalent than children dying with childhood cancer,” Dickenson said. “It’s very prominent and very lethal, if you don’t fix it.”
Moved by the overwhelming need for medical care in the region, Dickenson co-founded the Chadasha Foundation in 2010 with a group of medical professionals led by his longtime mentor, Knoxville cardiologist Dr. Clint Doiron. Chadasha’s mission is to “bring spiritual and physical healing in the name of Jesus Christ.” Since its founding, the organization has been involved in establishing clinics, orphanages, schools and various ministries.
The hospital constructed through Chadasha’s efforts, which sheltered injured Haitians during one of the worst natural disasters in the Caribbean’s history, eventually transitioned to serve children in need of pediatric heart surgery. Dickenson has now traveled to Hispaniola 10 times to treat children in need and intends to continue.
“The power of one saved life is indescribable,” Dickenson said. “It means so much to those children and to their families to have these congenital heart diseases fixed.”
Throughout his 40-year career in cardiology, Dickenson has sought to heal the sick while providing spiritual support to patients who seek it, often praying with those in need of comfort. His professional and spiritual foundation was shaped in part by his education at Trevecca, where faculty modeled both professional excellence and deep faith. He recalls professors who left a lasting impression and hands-on experiences that helped shape his career.
“My clinical rotations were an amazing experience. I was seeing patients under the supervision of doctors and seeing how different physicians treat their patients. I got a taste of the real world,” Dickenson said.
Since graduating, Dickenson has worked at the same practice in Knoxville, becoming deeply involved in his community and building lasting relationships with his patients.
“I tell people, I have one God, I have had one job, one wonderful wife Jenny, one daughter and I’ve lived in one house the whole time. But we do have multiple cats,” Dickenson said with a laugh.
As he reflects on his career and education, Dickenson sees those deep relationships and his faith in God as central to his work. Though he never could have imagined where his career would take him, he has continued to embody the values Trevecca emphasized as essential to practicing medicine.
“My professors showed me the impact that an authentic Christian life could have,” Dickenson said. “You have people who are suffering, but if you enter into that suffering with them, you earn their trust and can celebrate the small victories. There is so much joy in that.”