By Debra E. Williams, MSN, RN, American Red Cross full-time volunteer nurse leader in national and state positions. Her past professional experience includes work as an ARNP and CNS in several community settings in Missouri, Illinois, and Texas. This is the third in a series we are running on this blog by nurses who are or were Red Cross volunteers engaged in the disaster response following last month’s tornadoes in Oklahoma.

On Saturday, May 18, I was driving back home to Oklahoma after leading a Texas Red Cross nursing leadership conference in Houston. Before that, I had been in West, Texas, the site of the fertilizer plant explosion that killed 13 first responders and three community members and injured many more. There I’d been leading the Red Cross Health Services piece of the disaster response as manager for two weeks.

When I’m not participating in such disaster response activities in my coverage area, my usual full-time volunteer nursing leadership role with Red Cross is to recruit, train, retain, mentor, and support leadership nurses and to build partnerships internally and externally across all of Red Cross business lines—disaster, service to armed forces, blood services, international, and preparedness, health and safety. Inside Oklahoma, I support the Oklahoma State nurse liaison, Daniel Cadaret, in his efforts to recruit, train, retain, mentor, and […]