Memorial Medical Center Case Study

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Memorial Medical Center was situated “three feet below sea level, which is on one of the low points in the bowl in New Orleans (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” This hospital served as a “shelter whenever hurricanes threatened: employees would bring their families and pets, as well as coolers packed with food (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” Having 2,000 people taking shelter in this hospital on top of 200 patients, and over 600 workers in one place during a category 5 hurricane, ran a huge risk. This was not something that was assessed, because the author stated, “this is something that citizens who live around the hospital normally do during a crisis like this (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” I also do not think that individuals believed that Hurricane Katrina would have been as bad as it was, because this is the storm that is considered to be a “lesson learned (President George W. Bush, 2005)”. Plans were in place on how to handle a natural disaster “A 54 year old nursing director was the “rotating emergency-incident commander designated for Katrina and was in charge, also a woman by the name of Mulderick the chairwoman of the hospital’s emergency-preparedness committee helped draft Memorial’s emergency plans, …show more content…

patients should be the first patients to be evacuated. Those are the individuals who would be the likely at risk, rather than those who are had irreversible or terminal conditions (Fink, Sheri, 2009).” Staff members “also came up with strategies on how to handle patients “they split the remaining individuals into groups (Fink, Sheri,

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