LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Superhuman efforts of healthcare workers

Friday, October 8, 2004

Dear Sir:

Would you kindly permit us space in your publication to make some observations in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan. While there will no doubt be many stories of heroic rescues and acts of bravery by many throughout this country during Hurricane Ivan.

I would like to publicly recognise and highlight the superhuman efforts of all our healthcare workers who worked in the medical shelters and the hospital and persevered throughout the onslaught of the hurricane, rendering medical care to the people of these islands, sometimes in difficult circumstances and in the midst of uncertainty about the well-being of their families and property.

Despite substantial personal and property losses, our employees functioned as a team and under extraordinary circumstances continued to give priority to patient care, sometimes with humour at the exhilaration of it all or sometimes with tears at the recognition of personal tragedies all around.

While most other activities ceased on the island immediately prior to, during and after the hurricane the Cayman Islands Hospital remained open and continued to deliver 24-hour care through our Accident and Emergency Department, Inpatient Units and the Operating Theatre. Our Emergency response team of Paramedics and EMT’s also worked tirelessly throughout the storm, even at great personal risk to rescue and render medical care to those in need.

The Hospital, like other places, lost electricity during the hurricane as our stand-by generator was flooded by the storm surge leaving the facility without any source of electrical power. Despite this, our employees worked tirelessly in the sweltering heat to help those requiring medical care. Our maintenance crews worked well into the night cleaning and drying the cables and wires to the generator, enabling us to have power back on line after a short period of time.

Credit should be given to the skills of the architects and contractors who designed and built the hospital’s physical plant, which withstood the ferocious winds of the hurricane with relatively minor damage. However, the real heroes were our staff and our many volunteers who ensured the effective implementation of our hurricane plan and later went beyond the call of duty to ensure that our patients, facilities and equipment were secured and ready to deliver medical care to patients.

As soon as the winds from Hurricane Ivan had died down, people began pouring into our temporary emergency room which was moved three times within a 24-hour period due to the threat off flooding on the ground floor and loss of electrical power.

Staff at all levels of the organisation worked as a team to realise our priority of continued medical care. Everyone proved to be very fast learners, bringing organization and strategy planning skills learned in other circumstances to the new challenges. In some cases staff worked for more than 48 hours straight before being relieved to ensure that everyone who came through the doors of our facility received medical care in a safe, clean environment.

In addition to our team of committed and dedicated staff, the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority is grateful for the hard work and assistance provided by numerous volunteers locally and those who have arrived from overseas destinations to assist and provide relief for our staff and time to take care of their personal property, allowing us to continue to provide consistent medical care.

Times of crisis can destroy an organization or pull it together. At the Heath Service Authority there was a strong foundation of care and commitment that made people come together during this difficult period. Thank God that the appropriate systems and structures for disasters were in place, and they worked. The staff had done their homework and had an understanding of how things were to be done; they had rehearsed disaster drills and, when it was show time, they performed brilliantly. With clear directions in place, administration could “turn the system loose”. This paradox of direction without directives enabled the Health Services Authority to be highly responsive and adaptive, and like Noah’s Ark, was able to keep afloat.

The Cayman Islands Hospital remained open, not only for providing health care services but also for shelter and a source of meals when there was no other facility available. The fact that the hospital staff committed themselves so fully to doing whatever task necessary, including caring for people in the shelters across the country, despite having suffered personal losses; and that the Health Services came to be a source of succor and care to any one who needed it, including those who took refuge in our facilities during and immediately following the storm; reminds us, that the Cayman Islands Hospital truly provides, supports and maintains, - “the health and welfare of our people – and continues to live up to our motto of “caring people, quality services”.

Eloise Reid, CEO and the
Senior Management Team
Health Service Authority

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