Doris Parker, RN, boarded a plane today for Liberia to help her native country fight a deadly Ebola outbreak. She'll be gone for 3 months, and then spend 3 weeks in quarantine when she returns from the West African nation. Ms. Parker, a traveling medical surgical nurse from suburban Minneapolis, took a short break yesterday to talk about her decision to join a group of medical responders who are marching into danger.

"I am concerned for my safety, yes," she says. "However, I'm also aware that when I take the new precautions, there's no need to be afraid. I know I'll be able to take the right steps."

Ms. Parker says she's undergone training on how to don and doff personal protective equipment and will undergo more extensive training on safety procedures in Liberia.

She views Ebola as similar to such other infectious diseases nurses are exposed to on a daily basis as AIDS and tuberculosis. "Just way more contagious with a way higher mortality rate," she says of Ebola. "As nurses on the frontlines, we are trained to take universal precautions and treat every situation as a risk. I go into this work with the same attitude. The extensive training I'm going to receive on the ground [in Liberia] will let me safely do the work that I need to do."

Ms. Parker says she has a strong conviction to help out in a medical disaster and to care for the sick. "As a nurse, this is what you do: You take care of people," she says. "Your instinct is that you want to be able to help and stop this at the source. Being from Liberia, I feel a duty to that country. And as a member of the global community, I have an obligation to make sure Ebola doesn't spread to other countries."

Ms. Parker was born and raised in Liberia. She has lived in the United States for the past 28 years. Ebola has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Ms. Parker will work out of an Ebola treatment center or "mini-hospital" in a remote area of far eastern Liberia, near the border with the Ivory Coast. The goal is to move people infected with Ebola away from families and communities and into a quarantined space.

Dan O'Connor