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Volunteer nurses, therapists, and pharmacists from the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center traveled to Florida to help deal with the fallout from the four hurricanes that hit or brushed the state over a six-week period.

Mabelline George, RN, BSN, noticed that as she and other nurses entered Tallahassee, Fla., in September to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Ivan, other people were fleeing the area.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” George remembers asking herself.

Like nurses from other parts of Texas and the United States, George, a mental health nurse in the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, volunteered to travel to Florida to help deal with the fallout from the four hurricanes that hit or brushed the state in a six-week period. She and other VA employees received their regular salaries while working.

Florida hospitals needed extra nurses to help with public health issues, to fill in for nurses who couldn’t make it to work, and to relieve nurses who needed time off to rest or deal with damaged or destroyed homes. But why would George head into a disaster area when others had decided to leave for their safety?

Because she’s a nurse.

“I’ve been there,” says George, a native Houstonian. “Being in Houston, I’ve been involved in hurricanes and I know what it’s like to not be able to get to work and the patients still need you. If I could go somewhere and give someone some help, I was happy to do that.”

To make it easier for nurses from other states to volunteer, the Florida State Board of Nursing granted temporary licenses to out-of-state registered nurses with active licenses. The Department of Veterans Affairs asked for volunteers from its 176 medical centers around the country.

At least 12 Texas VA nurses traveled to Florida along with VA nurses from around the country and nurses from nongovernment medical facilities. There, they were joined by other health care workers along with people skilled in engineering, safety, security, logistics, and administrative functions needed to run a health care facility.

Friends in need

Beulah Hadrick, RNC, MSN, a nurse executive at the Houston VA Medical Center, says she, too, volunteered to travel to Florida to help out. “We were just glad to provide some assistance because you never know when it’s going to be your turn,” she says.

Hadrick, a VA nurse for 24 of her 28 years in nursing, left Houston Aug. 24 to help out after Hurricane Charley hit southwestern Florida. A reservist who previously has been called up to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Hadrick spent 10 days in Sarasota, Fla., at a nursing home that had been converted into a special-needs shelter.

“We had a lot of patients that were displaced and they had some medical problems,” she says. “They were not acutely ill to be in a hospital but may have had care in the home.”

The center had two floors with 60 full beds on each floor. Like other nurses, Hadrick worked 12-hour shifts and took little time off. Unlike some areas, the nursing home where she worked had both electricity and running water. It also received more beds to accommodate new patients as well as medical supplies and equipment.

Physicians were available to write prescriptions and a nearby pharmacy delivered medicine to the nursing home/shelter. Although most patients required only basic nursing care, some became ill enough to be transferred to a hospital.

Hadrick says many patients didn’t want to leave the shelter and one woman with whom she had bonded asked her to go with her to see how much her home had been damaged. The woman wound up in a skilled care facility when she discovered her home had been destroyed. Patients and residents were grateful to those who came from other states to help, she says.

“They were really appreciative when they saw us and asked us where we were from,” Hadrick says. “They would just express their sincere thanks and ask if there’s anything they can do for us.”

Tony Barrera, RN, MSN, a nurse manager for the West Texas VA Health Care System in Big Spring, worked in Sebastian, Fla., on the Atlantic Coast from Sept. 7 to Sept. 16. He worked in a shelter at a Sebastian high school, treating the “walking wounded,” three-quarters of whom were aged 70 or older.

Barrera, 46, who has been with the VA since 1985, says many patients were suffering from shock, depression, denial, guilt, and anger.