ED physician provides view from the front lines
ED physician provides view from the front lines
Many stories are emerging from the EDs and field hospitals responding to patient needs following Hurricane Katrina, but few have been as moving as the e-mail by Hemant H. Vankawala, MD, an emergency physician with Questcare partners in Dallas, Denton (TX) Regional Medical Center, and the downtown Dallas Baylor University Medical Center, sent to several of his colleagues. With his permission, ED Management is pleased to share excerpts of his e-mail, composed at the field hospital established at the Louis Armstrong Airport outside New Orleans by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):
For the past eight days, I have been living and working at the New Orleans airport delivering medical care to the Katrina hurricane survivors . . . Our team was the first to arrive at the airport and set up our field hospital. We watched our population grow from 30 DMAT [Disaster Medical Assistance Team] personnel taking care of six patients and two security guards to around 10,000 people in the first 15 hours. These people had had no food or water or security for several days and were tired, frustrated, sick, wet, and heartbroken. People were brought in by trucks, buses, ambulances, school buses, cars, and helicopters.
It was a nonstop, never ending process — a 24-hour-a-day operation. The CNN footage does not even begin to do it justice. The roar of [helicopter] rotary blades, the smell of jet [fuel], and the thousands of eyes looking at us for answers, for hope. Our busiest day we offloaded just under 15,000 patients by air and ground. At that time, we had about 30 medical providers and 100 ancillary staff.
All we could do was provide the barest amount of comfort care. We watched many, many people die. We practiced medical triage at its most basic, "black-tagging" the sickest people and culling them from the masses so that they could die in a separate area. I cannot even begin to describe the transformation in my own sensibilities from my normal practice of medicine to the reality of the operation here. We were SO short on wheelchairs and litters we had to stack patients in airport chairs and lay them on the floor. They remained there for hours, too tired to be frightened, too weak to be care about their urine- and stool-soaked clothing, too desperate to even ask what was going to happen next.
We did not practice medicine . . . There was no time to talk, no time to cry, no time to think, because they kept on coming . . . Imagine people so desperate, so sick, so like the five to 10 "true" emergencies you may get on a shift coming through the door nonstop that it is all that you take care of. Imagine having no beds, no O2, no nothing except some nitro, aspirin, and all the good intentions in the world. We did everything from delivering babies to simply providing morphine and a blanket to septic and critical patients and allowing them to die.
These people have nothing. Not only have they lost their material possessions and homes, many have lost their children, spouses, parents, arms, legs, vision, everything that is important. Talk to these survivors. Hear their stories and what they have been through. Look into their eyes.
You will never think of America the same way.
You will never look at your family the same way.
You will never look at your home the same way — and I promise, it will forever change the way you practice medicine.
Many stories are emerging from the EDs and field hospitals responding to patient needs following Hurricane Katrina, but few have been as moving as the e-mail by Hemant H. Vankawala, MD, an emergency physician with Questcare partners in Dallas, Denton (TX) Regional Medical Center, and the downtown Dallas Baylor University Medical Center, sent to several of his colleagues.Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.