HJNO Mar/Apr 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2025 13 Elder Ultimately, it did. At first, we didn't know what had happened. Later, once we started to hear that this sounded like an act of terrorism, we didn't know exactly what it was, but we knew there was some element of that. The morning before, we actually had a bomb threat called in. That happens occasionally, and we have a process for it. It was unfounded — there was nothing here. We dealt with the police and handled everything like we normally would as part of our process. Once we found out that this could be terrorism, the next thing that came to mind was, okay, how do we need to secure the facility? Part of our MCI plan involves our hospital public safety. We're very lucky as a large trauma center. We have a large, armed public safety force here at the hospital that some hospitals just don't have. Editor I had a hard time getting through there. Elder We have a large hospital with a lot of entrances, and we're able to lock down when this happens. While that's part of it, we then took it to the next level and looked at what more we need to do. We reached out to the city and law enforcement to talk about what the real threat is. Are we worried about other things? What else do we need to know? Then, because of that previous bomb threat earlier in [the previous] day, we had some additional resources on site that helped with looking for any bomb threat again. We went through that whole process all over again just to double check and to make sure that we were doing everything above and beyond to make sure this place was safe, and that there would be no targeting of any staff or the hospital in some sort of complex, coordinated attack. Editor Was there a moment where there was a concern? Elder Absolutely. Once we knew this was terrorism, we knew that we had to take all the security even more seriously than we normally would. That's why we put those additional resources out and went through the process to really ensure that we were continuing to be a safe campus while we were handling all of the patients. And then, ultimately, we turned into family reunification — getting the families and the victims together — and then working with the city and state partners on notification of the families of the victims that had died on scene. Greiffenstein It was eerie that people have asked me the days after, how we handled it and how things were. And it must've been crazy. To be honest, I got the alert at 4:00 in the morning. I waited for something else to happen and another phone call. Nothing happened, so I went back to sleep, came in at 7:00 in the morning after learning what had actually happened, went straight to the emergency room, met Dr. Elder, and everything was smooth. I went up to the ICU, walked around, talked to the leadership. Everything was smooth. Same thing in the OR — everybody was doing what they were supposed to do. In reality, once the patients were here and the processes were in place, it wasn’t that different from what we do fairly regularly. This volume of patients and patient care is a little bit more than usual, but it's not overwhelming. It really felt, on that level, very much like a regular Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, for us, this is the nature of our city. But there was definitely a palpable sense of vulnerability, and I think people were shaken. I will say that it was equally encourag- ing and inspiring to see them go about their business like true professionals without skipping a beat — all hands on deck, every- body doing exactly what they need to do, the way they usually do it, making sure that patients and patient families were comfort- able, putting on a bold face … but in private conversations, people were shaking. Editor How did you support each other during that — when you know that you’re shaken, you're in a trauma, or you're in a terrorist situation? How are you keeping each other whole? Lacy I think it's just a back-and-forth of, "Are you good? You good?We're good?"Thumbs up, and keep trucking on. Jeanne Marie and I just kept looking at each other all day like, "Is this real?" And then just, "Are you okay? You need a break? You need water? No? Okay." And then jumping right back into it. Elder I think it's also a part of communicating with the partners that you have out there, not only at the hospital, but in the community. All of these MCIs and big incidents really are built on relationships. It's the communication, but it's also knowing the right people to talk to both in your organization and out of your organization when you're dealing with it. Then you're getting more information as things are happening, and you use that information to help make the best decision you can with what limited info you have early. For us, it was, “How do we escalate secu- rity? What do we need to do? Are we doing all the right things?”That, for me, as a leader in the hospital, at least lets me know we're doing everything we can to make this place safe. And then, internally, you have to be able to communicate that to everybody around you — to say, “Here are the things we're doing.” As soon as we started doing these things, we let the ED know. And we let the trauma services know that, yes, we're aware this is what's going on. You have to just continue to communicate that while it's happening to let people know that we understand that there's a concern, and here are the things we're doing for it. Greiffenstein Can I say one more thing to that point?When I was a third-year medical student at the first day of clinical rotations at Jersey City Medical Center across the river from Lower Manhattan on 911, we got the first batch. The first clinical experience was getting dust-covered paramedics and fire