Unheeded Warnings, Last Words, the Value of a Bathtub: More Notes from Alabama

Sue Hassmiller, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, has been blogging from the tornado-damaged area in Alabama. This post elucidates some of the philosophic and strategic context for the emotionally challenging Red Cross volunteer work she’s currently involved in. This and all previous posts in this series are being collected on a separate page for easy reference.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

Human Caring
It amazes me how much compassion there really is in the world. You don’t always see it day to day, but during disasters it’s the definitive order of the day. It is so refreshing to be a volunteer in this temporary health care structure we are working in and not have to worry about 10-minute office visits or rushing in and out of patients’ rooms trying to get it all done before the bell rings for the day. The Red Cross simply (with guidelines, of course) directs us to attend to all human needs (ok, yes, we do have forms to fill out). Therefore, a visit to a distraught family could take 10 minutes, 10 hours, or 10 months.

The devastation is so great here that as long as there are people to volunteer and the financial resources to carry on, this job will go on for years. A few of the groups that are here besides the Red Cross […]

2016-11-21T13:13:16-05:00May 10th, 2011|Nursing|1 Comment
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Dispatch #3 from the Alabama Tornado Zone: A Tight-Knit Community, the Red Cross ‘CSI’ Unit, Public Health Nursing

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, […]

2016-11-21T13:13:16-05:00May 9th, 2011|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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‘Some Pretty Bad Things’: Dispatch #2 from the Alabama Tornado Disaster

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 […]

2016-11-21T13:13:17-05:00May 6th, 2011|nursing perspective|3 Comments
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Into the Alabama Tornado Zone: First Dispatches from a Red Cross Volunteer

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, […]

2016-11-21T13:13:17-05:00May 6th, 2011|Nursing|5 Comments
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Reporting from ICN: Japanese Nurses Take on Disaster; Swaziland Saves its Nurses

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. 

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. […]

2016-11-21T13:13:18-05:00May 6th, 2011|Nursing|5 Comments
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