Revisiting Katrina’s Lessons 10 Years Out, from a Nursing Perspective

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Hurricane Katrina Hits New Orleans, August 29, 2005/ Wikimedia Commons Hurricane Katrina Hits New Orleans, August 29, 2005/ Wikimedia Commons

This past week we’ve seen many media retrospectives on the devastation Hurricane Katrina visited on the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. I remember it vividly—as AJN’s news director at the time, I cut short a Labor Day vacation and flew to Mississippi on September 10 to report firsthand on how relief efforts were progressing.

I visited the emergency shelter staged at the Meridian Naval Air Station and then drove as far as I could south from Meridian toward the Gulf of Mexico. I got as far as Hattiesburg, Mississippi, before I had to turn around because there were no open gas stations and my gas tank was at half-empty. The devastation along the highway was remarkable; trees were completely flattened and debris of all sorts was scattered about as if a giant trash can had been overturned. And this was still about 70 miles inland from the Gulf.

Over the following months and then years, AJN published a number of articles and reports on health-related issues that arose from Hurricane Katrina (see the list below). We highlighted the heroics of many nurses who found ways to deliver care with few resources, discussed […]

2016-11-21T13:02:05-05:00August 31st, 2015|career, Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Chemical Attack Response, Posts for Nursing Students, Ethical Agonies, Blog Carnivals, More

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

You’re working in the ED of a 300-bed metropolitan hospital one Sunday morning when you receive a radio transmission from a paramedic whose ambulance is en route with a casualty of a suspected nerve gas attack. The paramedic reports that two additional ambulances are also on the way. Nerve gas? You’re stunned. What should you do first?

quinn.anya/via flickr creative common quinn.anya/via flickr creative commons

That’s the start of our 2002 article (free for a month, until October 5) about chemical attacks and their aftermath. Such an event is not an impossibility here in the U.S. Remember the 1995 attacks in Japan, in which sarin gas was released at several points on the Tokyo subways by members of a radical cult, killing 12 and injuring thousands? And there is now convincing evidence (not to mention horrific photos of the many children killed) that the Syrian government used nerve gas on its own people last week despite widespread prohibitions against its use. In fact, USA Today reported that a number of the nurses and physicians who treated the victims of the gas attack may have subsequently died themselves from exposure to the patients’ clothing and skin.

Our 2002 article describes how nerve gas works on the body, the […]

2016-11-21T13:06:39-05:00September 6th, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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