Some would say nurses are the heartbeat of any hospital. “Nurses are incredibly resilient,” Annette Greenwood said.
Greenwood is the western region's Chief Nursing Executive for HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital system in the country. She said some nurses are also victims of the wildfires that tore through the Los Angeles area in January and need relief.
A handful of Las Vegas-based emergency and intensive care nurses deployed this week to help staff a sister hospital in Thousand Oaks, within the Los Angeles metro area. They had many nurses willing to head out to lend a helping hand and provide some respite to their colleagues. Ultimately, it came down to a handful of nurses who also had California licensure.
“Everybody's sort of running away from the fires and they're running into the situation,” Greenwood said. “I remember thinking of them a lot like superheroes, you know sort of putting their cape on — which is their scrubs.”
Greenwood said nurses need support so that they can be effective. It’s a similar situation to what she saw during the pandemic.
“It's an event with a lot of uncertainty,” she said. “And so the staff that are there are trying to figure out what's the next steps for them.”
The hospital system set up a free store to help nurses who were also affected by the fire, giving them an opportunity to pick up any needed items. Among their most requested items are flashlights because many are still experiencing power outages.
HCA has set up a system similar to the command centers fire and law enforcement set up during and following disasters, and they’re monitoring needs daily. They have hospitals in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and elsewhere in California, and 187 hospitals in all throughout the network. They can also contract with traveling nurses if there’s a need.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
