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Hurricane Katrina ResponseSept. 16, 2005Evacuees Helped By Nursing Students
Baylor's Louise Herrington School of Nursing students and faculty are responding with an unparalleled spirit of charity. The school's dean, Dr. Judy Wright Lott, said they are taking numerous steps to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees, from providing health care to people in Reunion Arena, enrolling displaced nursing students and collecting donations to facilitating volunteer efforts for the entire faculty and student body.
"We are incorporating one day of volunteer efforts as part of our community clinical course," Lott said. "Anna Hilton, our community clinical instructor, took eight students to Reunion Arena on Saturday [Sept. 4]. They worked for 10 hours straight, providing triage, taking health histories, bandaging and treating minor injuries and much more.
"They didn't want to let our students leave on Saturday," Lott added.
Assistant professor Lori Spies, who serves as the school's missions coordinator, said students have taken initiative in finding ways to help.
"Four undergraduate students collected over $2,000 in donations at a local mall last Saturday [Sept. 4]. The school donated the cash collected to the North Texas Food Bank, which is feeding the county's evacuees, and the checks were given to the American Red Cross," she said. "They've set up boxes and fliers and have taken responsibility for getting them to the Salvation Army and Red Cross."
Spies said students' generosity even extended to a volunteer "shift" at a Dallas hospital emergency room. Three students, who had just gotten off work at 11 p.m., went to the ER and stayed until 4 a.m., giving exhausted hospital staff a desperately needed chance to rest.
Spies also is arranging different opportunities for faculty and students to volunteer through various agencies in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
"The first one is going to be working in the North Texas Food Bank. We're also plugging in through the relief organizations to volunteer on site at the clinics at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center," she said.
The tremendous need created by Katrina is providing impetus to begin a mission response group at Baylor's nursing school.
"We are hoping to start meeting and get Red Cross training so we can plug in earlier when disasters occur," she said, adding that the commitment of the Baylor students and faculty will be an ongoing help in providing relief.
"We will still be here in two or three weeks when the others go back to work," she said.
Baylor nursing school lecturer Charles Kemp and the Agape Clinic & Baylor Community Care are participating in the Dallas County Medical Society's effort to provide healthcare for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Baylor Community Clinic is a ministry and service-learning program at the nursing school.
The nursing school even stepped up to assist a faculty member with the LSU School of Nursing, located in New Orleans and according to reports, still under about eight feet of water.
Earlier this week, the LSU faculty member had contacted Baylor's nursing school about accessing Baylor's online library materials so she could complete a proposal. Lott contacted Billie Peterson-Lugo with Baylor Libraries, who found a way to accommodate the professor's request.
"It's amazing what the human spirit can endure in times like these," the LSU faculty member said in an e-mail to Lott. "We couldn't do it without people like you. I greatly appreciate your help and generosity."
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