Archive for May, 2011

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Dispatch #3 from the Alabama Tornado Zone: A Tight-Knit Community, the Red Cross ‘CSI’ Unit, Public Health Nursing

May 9, 2011

Panoramic view of Forest Lake Neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Photo credit: Dennis Drenner/American Red Cross.

Sue Hassmiller, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, has been blogging from the area in Alabama recently devastated by tornadoes, where she’s volunteering with the Red Cross. This and all previous posts in this series are being collected on a separate page for easy reference.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

Hackleburg Is Gone!
Picture yourself in your present surroundings; take a look around at the buildings, the houses—and now try to picture them completely gone, with you standing right in the middle of it. That is what Hackleburg went through on April 27. Ninety percent of the small town is gone. You can tell that people lived there by the personal items strewn about, but you can hardly tell where the houses once stood. They have all been flattened. This is very different from the aftermath of the flood following Hurricane Katrina, when the flood-soaked houses were pretty much left standing.

Standing there in the middle of the rubble with family members, it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone survived this. But they did . . . at least most of them. This is a close-knit, church-going town, and are all there for one another. Their spirit is unfathomable. Frank (not real name) shows me where his sister was blown to and her medical bag, which he found. She was a paramedic. He shows me where they found the baby, and the fish pond his kids used to play in when they were small, and how he wishes the water and fish were still there. But they’re gone too. He wished he could show me the bathtub that saved his mother, but he can’t find it. He brought me to his “kinfolk” where they were eating their dinner: hot dogs on the grill and cupcakes from Walmart. They were happy to be alive—except for the matriarch, who asked God why He took her daughter and not her. The survivor guilt is unbearable. Frank tells me they will rebuild, love one another even more, and move on. I wonder how they will . . . . Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in nursing perspective, public health nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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‘Some Pretty Bad Things’: Dispatch #2 from the Alabama Tornado Disaster

May 6, 2011

Susan Hassmiller, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, has been blogging from the area in Alabama recently devastated by tornadoes, where she’s volunteering with the Red Cross. This is her second update; it’s long, but it has some powerful details. This and all previous and upcoming posts in this series are being collected on a separate blog page, for easy reference.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

Wednesday, May 4: I’ve seen some pretty bad things in my day, but this is really really bad. After having slept for only a few hours under the blare of gymnasium athletic lights which they could not figure out how to turn off, I head to the disaster headquarters in Birmingham with three other women. I’m fascinated by a nurse from Switzerland who lost her husband 20 years ago and has now made a living out of helping others in this way all over the world . . . a one woman Mother Theresa. I am impressed and honored to be with her. When I tell her what I do, she does NOT seem so impressed, commenting that it sounds like I do a lot of paperwork! Oh well.

I’m happy to finally arrive at headquarters, which is an old CompUSA building. I meet people there who I know from my 36 years of work with the organization. Because it is a big disaster, there are a number of people from national headquarters in DC. Almost immediately the public affairs department (yes, every large disaster has such departments or units . . . just like any business would) asks me to do an interview with the Birmingham Times.

The reporter asks me (on this, the beginning of Nurses Week) why nurses are here in Alabama and what they will be doing. So I tell her. I then tell my supervisors here in health services and public affairs that, if I am to talk to the media, then I need to immediately see what is going on so I can describe it . . . so that’s how I spend my first day.

Nevaeh Gladney, 10, in a cot at the Red Cross Shelter at Belk Activity Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Gladney's family lost their home. Photo credit: American Red Cross

I travel with two other women by car to Tuscaloosa, a heavily damaged city with many deaths. I arrive at a very busy shelter, which at another time and place serves as a major recreation center. It’s filled with hundreds of the most vulnerable of the city. Although the tornado hit public housing and very big houses alike, the people from the very big houses are not here. Although I’m sure they’re just as devastated, they usually have other means, so they don’t come to shelters. This is why the Red Cross is so important; they care for those in need, the most vulnerable, 24/7, whatever those needs might be.

The shelter has meal services, child care services, legal services, sleeping quarters (yes, the gymanasium), a medical clinic, and much more, including a place for FEMA to do its own work with these victims. Almost everyone is a volunteer .  . . and now that the volunteers of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and other nearby areas have gone above and beyond in giving back to their neighbors, it’s people from all over the country who have come to help out.  And the needs are enormous: medical, psychological, financial, you name it!

‘Oh my God!’ A doctor from NC who has been there for a few days takes me out to see the damage. I find myself repeating the same words over and over: “oh my God” and “I cannot believe this” and “indeed I can’t.” When I learn of the hundreds of deaths, I am wondering how there weren’t thousands.

Homes are completely flattened, 100-year-old trees snapped like toothpicks, and personal items are everywhere, still, a week later. A purse here, a stuffed bear there, a woman’s purple bra, a can of green beans, a television set, a black shoe, a baby pacifier . . . all items wondering how they got to where they got to and their owners . . . well, most likely dead or injured.

‘In a tree, asleep.’ I understand that bodies were found far from their homes. A young boy traveling the streets the day after the tornado, when asked where his parents were, stated that they were up in a tree, asleep, and would not come down. These are the stories of Tuscaloosa, Alabama . . . and more to come. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in nursing perspective, public health nursing | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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Into the Alabama Tornado Zone: First Dispatches from a Red Cross Volunteer

May 6, 2011
Last summer, Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, wrote a series of posts for this blog as she spent her summer vacation  retracing the steps of Florence Nightingale in England and Turkey. Now she’s gone to Alabama as a Red Cross volunteer in the wake of a series of devastating tornadoes. You can read Susan’s daily on-the-go entries here. The accounts from the first two days—of her family’s history with the Red Cross in other disasters, and of arriving and settling in to less-than-ideal sleeping arrangements—are below. New updates (some of it quite moving and disturbing) will soon follow, and all updates will be collected on a separate page for easy reference.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor
Sue Hassmiller

Monday, May 2: Duty calls
I have been involved with the Red Cross for 36 years now, ever since the organization helped me find my parents when they were victims of an earthquake while vacationing in Mexico City. It was the day my parents made it home safely that I made a silent pledge to myself that I would find a way to repay my gratitude to this wonderful organization. As a young nurse, I signed up with the Red Cross in my college town of Tallahassee. I went on quite a few disasters in my single days, but these days, with all my job and family responsibilities, the real hands-on work comes infrequently. I am torn to be leaving those responsibilities now, and especially on Mother’s Day, when I will be missing being with my own mother and my own (grown) children who will tell me that they are happy and proud to have me as their mother.

And I will cherish those words as always, but I do think of the hundreds of people affected in this disaster who have lost their mothers forever, or the mothers who lost their children, and I think perhaps for a short two weeks of my life I might find some way to help them. That is my desire.

Tuesday, May 3: First night in the disaster shelter
I am at work for the last day before leaving, and feel so grateful that I work for an organization (the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) that supports their employees in giving back to their community and country in this way. They have always been this way. I have worked there for 14 years and in that time have spent time away during 9/11, Katrina, the Indonesian tsunami, the four hurricanes that hit Florida at the same time, hurricane Floyd in NJ, and now this monster in Alabama that has no name. I don’t serve this way often, but every once in a while there is something so significant that I can’t ignore it. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in public health nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Reporting from ICN: Japanese Nurses Take on Disaster; Swaziland Saves its Nurses

May 6, 2011

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

In a special press briefing held at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting in Valetta, Malta (see my recent blog posts), on Wednesday, May 4, I had the opportunity to listen to two incredible stories of instances where nurses—or, in one case, a nurse—stepped up to deliver despite extremely trying circumstances. 

Japanese Nurses Association president Setsuko Hisatsune

Nurses do this all the time, and it’s important to recognize and highlight these situations because they make visible the value nurses bring to delivering health care and developing innovative health models.

After the tsunami. Japanese Nurses Association (JNA) president Setsuko Hisatsune (in photo) spoke of the rapid mobilization of nurses following the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan on March 11. She explained that while the JNA had had a disaster system in place since the 1995 Kobe earthquake, this disaster, followed by the widespread destruction from the tsunami, was unprecedented.

“We could not imagine this,” she said. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in audio interviews, international nursing, public health nursing, Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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Nurses Taking Care of Business on a Global Scale

May 5, 2011

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Old capitol of Malta, the walled city of Mdina

Since many readers may not know about international nursing, here’s a primer (for those who are interested) that provides some context for my upcoming blog posts from the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting in Malta (accompanied by some photos of the city from my morning bus ride). Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in international nursing, public health nursing, Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Notes of a Student Nurse: A Dose of Reality

May 4, 2011

By Jennifer-Clare Williams, who is a student at Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Springfield, Missouri. This is her first post for this blog.

Doyle Alphabet by fdecomite, via Flickr

It’s been said before that we are our own worst enemies, our own worst critics. I can’t imagine a time when these phrases are truer than during nursing school. Little more than a year ago, when I was starting my prerequisites for admission to the BSN nursing program, I was giddy with excitement. Images of what life would be like played in my head like episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, or, on a day I was feeling a bit more goofy, reruns of Scrubs.

I took any opportunity I had to share with friends, family—even new apartment neighbors—that I was well on my way to nursing school with the confident smile of a person destined to save the world, one patient at a time. I scoured discussion boards and nursing student forums late into the night, anticipating the day that I, too, would have something profound to contribute.

I laughed off those who warned me that the path was difficult and ridden with challenges. There was no bridge I couldn’t cross, no task I couldn’t do, and no test I couldn’t pass with flying colors. The world was mine. Now, I’m living those moments as a first semester nursing student—but a funny thing happened on the way to the present, a thing I will lovingly refer to as reality.

And reality has an uncanny way of making sure you’re well aware of his presence. The truth is, most days I feel more like the character Steve Urkel in Family Matters than like Meredith Grey in Grey’s Anatomy—awkward, unsure, and out of my element. My excitement masquerades more as fear. And those scrubs? Hardly the superhero cape I’d imagined. Yes, the truth is, for the first time in my life, I don’t have the definitive answers to anything, my “natural aptitude” for test taking continually disappoints me, and that confident, poised, straight-A student has somehow disappeared, leaving a nervous, uncomfortable rookie in her place.

I replay my mistakes (“No wonder your patient was uncomfortable—you put the bedpan under her backwards!”), I cry more than I ever have in my life, and I continuously wonder how on earth I will ever learn everything I need to know.

But there is good news. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in nursing students, professional identity, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , | 18 Comments »

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On the Road to the International Council of Nurses Conference in Malta

May 2, 2011

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

So I’m on my way to Valletta, Malta (Malta is a small Southern European country in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and North Africa and a five-hour ferry ride from Libya) for the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting. Since there’s no direct flight from my usual airport (Newark, New Jersey) to Malta, it was a no-brainer to go through Paris (April, Paris?) and stop there for a few days. I hadn’t been to Paris before—it was everything I thought it would be, and more. And its reputation as the “City of Light” is well deserved (see the photo of the Eiffel Tower at night, courtesy of my husband).  

This will be my third ICN meeting—I attended the centennial meeting in London, and then one a few years later in Copenhagen. It’s amazing to meet nurses from all over the world, many of whom are grappling with issues similar to those confronting us.

Many, though, are dealing with issues far worse than our own. For example, nurses from sub-Saharan Africa face enormous odds in the face of internal conflicts as well as HIV and AIDS, and nurses in Japan have recently dealt with a series of disasters. These nurses amaze me.

And then there are colleagues who seem to be on the same professional development trajectory we’re on. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in HIV/AIDS, international nursing, Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

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