When a team of eight Advocate Health Care associates traveled to Louisiana to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, they saw a lot of things that shocked them. Mass destruction. Illness. Death. But what shocked them most was something they didn't necessarily expect to find.
"Hope," said Amory Balucating, R.N., of Advocate Lutheran General Hospital. "I saw so much hope. The whole experience epitomized the nursing profession."
In response to one of the nation's worst natural disasters, Advocate Health Care, a faith-based, not-for-profit provider of health services, sent a team of volunteer nurses and other caregivers to spend two weeks helping the people of Louisiana. The team was organized from over 500 Advocate volunteers.
The team flew into Baton Rouge and was shuttled to Camp Port-Allen, also know as "Tent City," set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. There, along with several hundred other volunteers from across the country, the local volunteers were temporarily sworn into the military and assigned temporary badges.
The team, mostly made up of associates from Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center at 836 W. Wellington Ave., included six nurses, a social worker and a dentist. They were soon given work assignments and deployed to areas where help was most needed.
Balucating, along with Diane Cooper, R.N., of the surgical surveillance unit at Illinois Masonic, were sent to West Jefferson Hospital in Jefferson Parish outside of New Orleans to serve as supplemental hospital staff.
"The nurses at West Jefferson Hospital were so relieved to have volunteers," said Cooper. "The hospital is only about 60 percent staffed, and many of them have not heard any word about the remaining employees."
Tara Daly, R.N., of Illinois Masonic's neonatal intensive care unit, stayed a few nights at Tent City. She then moved to a Baton Rouge school, where she and others took calls from people searching for missing and deceased family members.
Daly heard countless stories from families missing their loved ones. To help ease the emotional drain felt by Daly and her fellow volunteers at the school, the group developed a system of snapping fingers twice in the air to highlight when a loved one was successfully found.
"Hearing the snap helped me because it meant a family member was helped, and that it would bring some closure for the family," said Daly.
Meaghan Strotman, D.D.S., part of the department of dentistry at Illinois Masonic, rode with a mobile team that traveled to several makeshift medical tents from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. At each site, the clinicians provided immunizations and doctor visits for those in need.
As they traveled, Strotman noted that most buildings and vegetation had a waterline indicating the high level of water during the flooding. There was also an extensive amount of debris, including boats, mattresses, appliances and clothing, still scattered on the streets.
Many houses stood deserted, yet the determination of the residents was evident. On the door of one evacuated house, words were written in masking tape: "We are alright. God Bless. We'll be back."
"Despite all that the victims had been through, their southern hospitality shined through," said Strotman. "They wanted the volunteers to feel at home in their city. They wanted to take care of the volunteers who had come to take care of them."
Back home in Chicago, 10 Advocate sites participated in Ochsner Hospital's "Adopt-a-Hospital Employee Program," designed to help employees of the New Orleans hospital who were in need of start-up personal items and supplies. Ten Ochsner employees, including several nurses and an engineer, were helped with various items donated by Advocate employees, including clothing, school supplies, canned goods and gift certificates.
"The news of Hurricane Katrina's devastation was just beginning when the phones started ringing across Advocate with offers to aid victims in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas," says Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO, Advocate Health Care. "When your daily work focuses on the health and well being of others, reaching out to those in need is a given." |
