HJNO Mar/Apr 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2025 15 of, all right, this is big and it's going to get bigger as we need to get families involved and either reunite them or give them some information. Lacy I think another aspect that played into all of this was social media. Information was flowing that we had no control over, and it triggered a lot of responses from families, both good and bad. The good information, like when they were able to find their families through whatever means, was great. But some of the videos that were circulating online ahead of time before any official releases triggered some pretty gnarly responses from the families that we had to be able to provide support for. Then, again, it was information that we had no control over. We couldn't verify it, and it wasn't our place to verify it. But we still had to be able to provide that support for the families in whatever way we could. The other thing that ties into that is that the secondary trauma can manifest itself physically as well. Some of the family mem- bers that were downstairs ended up needing an emergency room visit just as a result of getting some of that information. I think we knew these things were possible, but I don't think that we were ready for it. Not that we weren't ready for it … we were ready for it. But I think it was just a surprise in like, oh yeah, that too — the kind of situation where this is something that we know could hap- pen, and it's happening. Greiffenstein And on the back end, one of the charges of our trauma center is to care for the whole patient. We have a trauma recovery program, one of the oldest in the country in regard to dealing with the PTSD aspects of it, the post-traumatic emotional response to this. We have a trained clinical psychologist and an entire psychiatry team who screen every patient, every day, who “The other thing that ties into [receiving information from social media] is that the secondary trauma can manifest itself physically as well. Some of the family members that were downstairs ended up needing an emergency room visit just as a result of getting some of that information.” –Liz Lacy