HJNO Mar/Apr 2025

ROUNDTABLE 18 MAR / APR 2025 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS Editor Good to know. You have the ear of the state's healthcare and political leadership right now. Based on your experience that night, what one thing do they need to know or act on? Elder I would remind everyone that all disasters are local, so that initial response is going to come from that local region. What we do in the emergency management response, you need to remember that and focus on your local providers. They're the ones that are going to have to deal with it initially. How do we then support that group to help complete the mission, do whatever we have to do? Is that help in communications? Is that, ultimately, at some level, help in manpower? Is that help in coordinating media, coordinating other organizations? So, look at it always at the local level, because that's who's going to have to deal with it initially. Ask the questions, “What do you need? How can we help with it?”And then you build it from there. Greiffenstein Just a broad message using this as a springboard: I think that lately, as a physician, as a scientist, I've heard more and more personal opinion trumping expertise. It seems to be a cultural shift that's happening; and I would ask the most responsible people in our region, our state, our city, and our community, who are the legislators and the leadership, to defer to the experts. And in the case of a casualty [incident], in the case of a virus, in the case of whatever, please defer to the experts — people who've dedicated their lives to doing this — and you won't go wrong. Don't listen to the noise. Don't make assumptions. Please refer to the people who have the knowledge and expertise, whatever it might be. And in the case of healthcare in particular, please reach out to us. Editor Did this event change your perspective on your work or the role of trauma medicine? Lacy It did for me. I think that I saw a different side to healthcare. Almost 20 years at EMS, you see the lights, the sirens, the fast pace, the initial response. But for me, in this go-round, you had to see the holistic side of things. The care, the notifications — all that stuff got bunched into the healthcare realm. I think that's an important side to mass casualty response that I never really knew existed. If you think about it on a day-to-day basis, our nursing staff, our physicians have to do this every day when they get bad news. So, there's that aspect to it, which is why we have the trauma recovery services and all this in place already because we recognize that as a need. For me, just seeing that in real life to that extent was eye-opening. Elder I'll add that I think when this happened, as a trauma center, we really became the beacon of some hope for families. You had two scenes to this — what happened on Bourbon Street, which was horrific, and the care that was started there by the firefighters, police, paramedics, EMTs, and just a couple blocks away, that chaos was moved here at the hospital. This became the spot for not only the families of the patients that we had, but the families of those that died and never made it to the hospital. For us, it was a tough thing to deal with, but it was very important. And it was a responsibility that we took very seriously because of how important it was for those families. That really changed for me. When you talk about the plans at a bigger, regional level, the hospital's handling their patients and the families of those patients who are here at the hospital, and, typically, it's a governmental agency that's handling what's happening outside. For us, it really combined here. We have great partner- ships with our local agencies. We were able to partner with them to do all of that reunifi- cation and notification work here. But it was tough; it was hard. It's harder for the fami- lies. And we wanted to make it as easy as possible in order to do that here. We know now as a trauma center that we don't get away from that. That's always going to be a part of our response. It may look different in different instances, but, unfortunately, it's something that we do on a daily basis with families when we deal with patients. And we have to be able to expand on that quickly when we end up in an incident like this where you have multiple victims. Even if they're not our patients, if they're part of the incident, we're likely to touch those people; and we just have to be ready for them. Greiffenstein I would say it didn't change my perspective, but it definitely brought to light a lot of things that I'm very, very proud of and I appreciate about the people I work with and even more proud of the work we do here, and what I'm, fortunately, a part of. Maslanka Agreed. I already love working here, but it only really increases my appreciation for working at UMC and for all of the people who are here and the work that they do every day. Editor Is there anything I didn’t cover that you feel would be important to include? Elder I will add that the “terrorist act” [aspect] of this, in addition to what we talked about, in the initial safety of the facility, hearing what's going on in the community and not really knowing, it also really added to the complexity of the back end of how we dealt with families and law enforcement. Because now, as a terrorism event that involves federal agencies, the FBI, it becomes a much bigger incident on the back end. That is not just your typical, we deal with EMS, they bring us the patient. Maybe the police are there to deal with something if it's a motor vehicle collision or a violent crime. But it really became much bigger than that, and that took a lot of resources on the back end to help coordinate. Because we still have a hospital that we have to run with patients, patient privacy, and all the things that we have to worry about on a daily basis;