The Power of the Human Spirit
The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, in
one swift motion, Hurricane Katrina swallowed
New Orleans
and ravaged much of the surrounding area in late
August 2005. The devastation, physical and
financial, occurred thousands of miles away from
the Philadelphia region. Yet for UPHS
nurses, the call to reach out, to provide care,
to save lives and lift spirits, was strong.
An Immediate Response
 It started with CNN – the pictures were
too
much for Lori Bokelman, RN, BSN Hospital
of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP).
Dehydrated children. Abandoned men and
women in wheelchairs. Nurses working
around the clock. Bokelman knew she could
help. “Getting to the Gulf Coast became
an
immediate goal. One I had to achieve,” she
says. “I called the Red Cross and they
scheduled me for a training session the
next day.”
Worried about the impact leaving
her position as a nurse at the Hospital of the
University of Pennsylvania might have on her
personally and professionally, Bokelman
called her Nurse Manager. “The hospital
not
only briefly relieved me of my responsibilities
but paid me for the three weeks of time I
spent as a nurse for the Red Cross in
Louisiana,” she says.
Other UPHS nurses
also note the support they received at home made
a difference in their ability to bring their
skill and knowledge to those devastated by the
hurricane. Cate Paxson, RN, Penn Home Care
and Hospice, joined Hands On, the U.S.-based
affiliate of Hands On Worldwide, a
volunteer-staffed, non-profit organization
dedicated to timely disaster response and
relief.
Paxson left with a group of 40
volunteers who were told they would face
hardship conditions, including no running
water and no electricity. “I only volunteered
for one week and I'm still not sure what
impact it's had on me,” says Paxson, “but
I
know being able to go without worrying
about my job at home made a big
difference.”
Facing Hardships
 “The
conditions we were told to prepare for
were quite genuine,” says Tonja McGill,
RN,
Pennsylvania Hospital. “My first living
quarters were in the FEMA tent city. There
were more than 15 tents with about 100 cots
in each. We had trailer showers and 150
port-a-potties lined up against one wall.”
McGill was assigned to serve on a
postpartum/medical-surgical unit in
Lafayette, LA, 120 miles west of New
Orleans. The city had experienced an influx
of evacuees and local medical personnel were
in great need of relief. About 30 volunteers
including McGill worked 12-hour shifts at
the hospital.
Even on her assignment in Montgomery,
AL, Paxson saw devastation. “Most of the
people we saw were very poor but had managed
to get to some accommodations during the
storm,” she says. “Now, though, they
were
without money and many were sleeping in
cars. Those who had houses were often
without roofs and most of the shelters were
full. We were told on the way there that
patience and flexibility were the virtues of
the day.”
Many of the nurses who traveled
to this devastated region noted the eeriness
they felt in the once raucous New Orleans. “The
first thing I noticed while driving across the
bridge into the city was that the tops of the trees
were missing,” says McGill. “Driving
through all of the debris
covered streets was like driving
through the city of the dead.”
Bokelman felt it too. “Shops were
closed, homes boarded up and
no people were around,” she says.
Bokelman
helped to set up a fixed distribution and aid
site for the community each day in an area of
New Orleans called Algiers. “We had no
idea what to expect when we first opened our
van doors to a line of people all the way around
the block. But as nearly every person
embraced us with a thank you and tears of
relief, we quickly fell in love with the people
of New Orleans and knew we had to do
everything we could to help them.”
Helping
Our Own
And, it wasn't just the residents of
New Orleans and the surrounding areas that were
on our nurses' minds. Many were worried
for the health care professionals left behind. “One
of our greatest concerns was for our fellow nurses
who were still working in the areas hit by Katrina,” said
Ann Phalen, RN, PhD, Clinical Nurse specialist
in HUP's
Intensive Care Nursery. “We kept seeing
TV images of them having to hand-ventilate
patients – can you imagine having to handventilate
patients for up to 24 to 36 hours
straight?” Hand-ventilating requires the
continuous manual operation of an airbag
in order to maintain the flow of life-saving
oxygen into a patient's lungs.
According to Phalen,
when the ICN first got the call from UPHS Administration
to send volunteer nurses to help triage evacuees
expected to arrive later that day at
Philadelphia International Airport, the
response was so overwhelming that they had
to quickly organize a lottery system to select
the nurse (Kristy Kennedy, RN, BSN) who
would be permitted to go.
 Many others on the unit – Kate
Pocius, RN, Sandy Rodgers, RN, MSN, CRNP, Sunny
Bernardo, RN, MSN, CRNP, and Molly
DeCock, RN, BSN, – volunteered portions
of their weekends and days-off to assist in any
way needed.
Although she didn't travel to
the region, HUP Nurse Diane
Leichter, RN, BSN, CAN,
mobilized to help the people
devastated by Hurricane
Katrina. “The nurses who
joined the Red Cross came
home with extremely moving
stories about the devastation,”
she says. “One of the new nurses on our
unit is from that area and we suffered along
beside her as she worried about her parents
and her community.”
Last December, when
it came time to plan their holiday decorations,
the unit decided to use the spirit of New Orleans
as their theme. Their efforts paid off – the
unit won the hospital's holiday decoration contest
and
unanimously decided to use the money to
help a fellow nurse. “We called a hospital
in
New Orleans and asked for the name of a
nurse we could help,” says Leichter. The
nurse they chose was pregnant, due in
January, had an 8-year-old daughter and
had lost her home to the hurricane. With
her name and their sights set on their goal,
the nursing unit raised more money. “We
also collected three large boxes of gifts and
necessities and we sent everything to this
family,” says Leichter.
These acts of courage,
compassion and expertise are at the heart of
nursing. Perhaps Penn Presbyterian Medical Nurses
Tonette Moore, RN, BSN, and Kristine Chestnut,
RN, say it best: “Nurses treat the whole
person, physically, mentally and spiritually.”
Moore
and Chestnut both traveled to New Orleans over
Thanksgiving and worked closely with the Red
Cross and FEMA. “We
saw people returning to their homes for the
first time. When there is no one and
everything familiar to you is gone, someone
just walking up to you or being there with
you to listen, talk or provide prayer can
make all the difference,” they say. “The
residents were grateful to know that
someone cared.” Yet, our nurses didn't
just
care, they had the guts to go into a war
zone at great risk to themselves in order to
share their skilled knowledge and technical
and nursing expertise.
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