Tragedies can leave a lasting mark
As we approach Memorial Day we are saddened and shocked when we recall lives lost during an incomprehensible event like a war. We may have similar feelings when we see and hear reports of traumatic events closer to home mass shootings.
After the dead are buried and the wounded continue with their rehabilitation, there remain a large number of family members, witnesses, supporters, and workers of all types who require emotional healing. These survivors may exhibit a variety of symptoms related to PTSD, depression, and anxiety. If left untreated these symptoms may lead to drug dependency, aggression, and suicide.
The 2017 Las Vegas shooting occurred on the night of Sunday, October 1, 2017 when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 851 injured. As you might have imagined hundreds of medical personnel were involved in the immediate care of the wounded and their rehabilitation.
Recently, I interviewed Cathy Hamel, one of the nurse administrators at a local hospital in Las Vegas. She explained the immediate impact on the workers and subsequent strategies for their emotional care.
“Taking care of victims from around the world and needing to connect them with loved ones and heal them enough for travel was one of the tasks that most people don’t usually think about. The impact of taking care of our own local victims of the event was also obviously significant. Just coming to work and having to go through the massive line of press and navigate into a locked down hospital to begin a “normal” day of work was continually challenging.”
Cathy mentioned some of the strategies and experiences that helped here staff emotionally.
“We started diffusers combined with orange citrus, in the emergency room to decrease stress for nurses and physicians along with the patients. We are also working to strengthen our debriefing process after any critical/crisis event. LeAnn Thieman author Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul, gave us four sessions to assist in our healing. She described her own story involving the fall of Saigon. She arrived thinking she was assisting with the evacuation of 6 babies until President Ford enacted Operation Baby Lift and she now had to take 300 babies out.”
“Support from the community has been very helpful to us in the medical field. Food has been delivered for many weeks and the respect demonstrated by locals for those families coming to retrieve their dead is beyond meaningful.
We have received multiple banners from around the country supporting us during our tragedy. They are from other hospitals that have experienced similar horrors such like the one in the Orlando nightclub. A visit form Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton, helped pick up the attitudes of our staff and the wounded.”
“The severe loss at Mandalay Bay led to an eerily quiet Las Vegas. There was no place to go to escape it. A group of nurses and I traveled to a conference in October to Houston. Nurses from all over the country embraced us with hugs, tears and words of support just by seeing the hospital and city we were from. I was in a hospital on 9/11 in NY. I had hoped that I would never have to stay strong and lead others to respond to everything on that day. Now in Las Vegas, the demand for resilience repeats itself and I must dig deep to pick up and keep going again.
During the end of our talk Cathy also mentioned another unique stress management tool at her hospital. It is described below.
A quiet, reflective space to retreat to during the work day was created and is invaluable for staff members to reconnect with self, to be still, to close their eyes and re-energize. These “tranquility rooms” are intended to be the beginning of providing space that is available for all staff to refresh, regroup and re-energize. Hospitals across the country are coming up with a variety of ways to relieve stress and fight burnout. It has become a necessity.
Soldier’s Heart, the national nonprofit organization, is presenting a summer institute on trauma in Saratoga. Please use link to get more details: www. soldiersheart.net.