Johns Hopkins Medicine
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September 5, 2005
Hopkins Physicians, Nurses Deployed by Maryland Agency
to Help Beleaguered Louisiana Hospital
A team of three Johns Hopkins physicians and nine nurses flew from Martin Airport to Louisiana early Monday morning to join in a state-to-state relief mission to aid beleaguered medical personnel in the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast region.
The team of physicians from The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, as well as nurses from the Hopkins Hospital, Bayview, Howard County General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Home Care Group – will provide relief to exhausted staff at West Jefferson Medical Center, a 462-bed community hospital in Marrero, La., near New Orleans. Hopkins Medicine deployed the team in response to a request for assistance from the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to answer Louisiana’s call for help.
The physicians on the team are Michael Millin, M.D. and Stephen Sisson, M.D. from the Hopkins Hospital and Susan Bailey, M.D., from Bayview. The nurses from Hopkins Hospital are Paula Murphy, RN, Michele Whitfield, RN, and Lauren Baker, RN; from Bayview, Edward Britain, RN and Donna Hawley, RN; from Howard County General, Amy Herbert, RN; Jennifer Ross, RN; and Sherry Holland, RN; and from the Hopkins Home Care Group, Maggie Neely, RN and LouAnn Rau, RN.
In addition to today’s deployment, Johns Hopkins Medicine is building its own 100-person team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and others to respond rapidly if called upon to participate in the federal government's emergency medical relief plan for the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The disaster administrator for each part of Hopkins Medicine is collecting information from staff at the Hopkins Hospital, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the School of Public Health, Hopkins Bayview, Howard County General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, and the Hopkins Home Care Group who wish to volunteer for disaster response. Volunteers are expected to include not only physicians and nurses but administrators, administrative assistants, logistics experts, pharmacists, pharmacy assistants, supervisory nurses, advanced practice nurses or physicians assistants, respiratory therapists, social workers, pastoral care experts, clinical engineers and clinical technicians.
The information collected on prospective volunteers is being forwarded to Hopkins’ Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR), which is coordinating Hopkins' response to the crisis.
Other Johns Hopkins medical experts already are leading two American Red Cross medical needs assessment teams that left Friday for the Gulf Coast area. They are determining the number of emergency medical facilities the Red Cross needs to establish there and what health care resources will be required to meet the crisis unfolding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Thomas Kirsch, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of emergency medicine, director of emergency operations at the Hopkins School of Medicine, and deputy director of Hopkins’ Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) is heading one of the four-person Red Cross teams. W. Courtland Robinson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of international health at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, is leading the other team.
Kirsch flew to Baton Rouge, La. His team is assessing the Red Cross’s need for doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, as well as for additional Red Cross shelters. Kirsch is a former national physician advisor for the Red Cross’s Disaster Health Services and a former disaster consultant for the federal Centers for Disease Control.
Robinson is based in Montgomery, Ala., but is focusing his team’s assessment on the Mississippi Gulf Coast region. He teaches at Hopkins’ Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies (CIEDRS) and has worked with numerous refugee and charitable organizations.
Other Hopkins experts joining Kirsch and Robinson on the fact-finding mission for the Red Cross include Marguerite Littleton-Kearney, R.N., a public health nurse who teaches disaster management at the Hopkins School of Nursing and a captain in the Navy Nurse Corps reserves; disaster relief expert Alex Vu, D.O., M.P.H., an instructor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine who also went to Aceh, Indonesia, following the tsunami last December; and Kellogg Schwab, Ph.D., an assistant professor and co-director of the Center for Water and Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose areas of expertise include water-borne illnesses and sanitation.
Additional Hopkins experts have gone or are expected to go to the Gulf Coast. Lee Jenkins, M.D., Ph.D. senior resident in emergency medicine, has already been deployed as part of a New Jersey Disaster Medical Assistance Team (D-MAT). Riccardo Collela, D.O., director of the emergency medical service at Howard County General Hospital, which is part of Hopkins Medicine, is on standby to be deployed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
