“A lot of us wanted
to do something,” recalls Amanda Hamm, outgoing SOTA club president. “We
were putting together these ADL packets, which were basically personal
care items. We were going to ship them down, but I wanted to go down
there. I wanted to see and experience it, and maybe reflect on it via my
coursework as a special topic of study.” “We also wanted a focus of our
trip to be around the healthcare system in some way,” says Gayle Offenberg.
“But we also wanted an even balance between doing physical cleanup tasks,
volunteering at hospitals and rehabilitation centers, and talking with
people from different professions.” To achieve this balance, the members
of OT Gulf Support split their time between clean up efforts at the
schools and five Healthcare settings in New Orleans.
Getting to New Orleans
Over the ensuing weeks,
Tufts-BSOT graduate students Heather Bailey, Mike Ferrelli, Amanda Hamm,
Paula Querido Kahn, Theresa Leed, Gayle Offenberg, Lindsay Malarky, and
Amy Urquhart worked to organize their journey. They rented a 15-person
passenger van to accommodate themselves, the ADL packets and basic
supplies they would need (water, food) to spend a week in New Orleans in
January 2006. Under the guidance of Sharan Schwartzberg, OTR/L, EdD, FAOTA,
Tufts OT Dept chair, and Andrea Sherwin, OTR/L, PhD, the faculty-SOTA
liason, OTGS sought support through fundraising efforts and networking. OT
Gulf Support was in touch with occupational therapy programs and relief
organizations in the area including LSU’s Occupational Therapy department
and Common Ground from where the ADL packets were disseminated. The trip
was made possible with support from the Tufts Office of Graduate and
Professional Studies, and an award from the Graduate Student Council (GSC).
A win-win situation was offered by the Tulane University Paint Rally who
provided housing in return for their assistance with cleaning three public
schools in New Orleans.
The School Clean Up
In the brief time he
had been cleaning at the Booker T. Washington High School, Mike Ferrelli
had become accustomed to the mask he wore over his face, the overwhelming
odor around him, the discarded, decaying food which was littered
throughout the halls of the school, and what resided in the stairwells and
hallways. But the messages in the chalkboards were a surprise. “The
messages were from people who had stayed in the school, apologizing for
having to break in and leave such a mess,” says Ferrelli. “But they had no
choice. They had no power or water, so this was bare-boned survival
instinct and after the floodwater left, the mildew set in. There were four
distinct smells in the schools. There were the mold and mildew smells,
which were just overpowering, and then there were the rotten food and
sewage smells. The whole experience was really powerful, and not something
that had been in the news.”
The Healthcare context
The clean up work
helped OT Gulf Support gain a new perspective on what occurred in New
Orleans. But the items they found and the words they read could only say
so much. The only way to uncover the whole story of the hurricane, they
reasoned, was to speak to the people who had lived through it. To do so,
OT Gulf Support left their masks and cleaning gear behind, and spoke with
the patients and employees (i.e., occupational therapists, speech
therapists, physical therapists, etc.) at the Children’s Hospital of New
Orleans, New Orleans Home and Rehabilitation, Touro Rehabilitation
Hospital, The ARC of Greater New Orleans, and the Crane Rehabilitation
Center.
While OTGS spent
time observing the work of each institution, they also performed tasks
related to occupational therapy. At the Children’s Hospital, for example,
they helped track down hundreds of missing occupational therapy patients
and ran groups at both the hospital and New Orleans Home and
Rehabilitation. While OT Gulf Support couldn’t provide the direct service
needed at New Orleans Home and Rehabilitation (or at the other places they
visited), as they were primarily first-year occupational therapy graduate
students, they were able to provide those they came across with something
else—the chance to share their experiences.
“One of the things we did was just sit and listen to people,” says
Ferrelli. “At New Orleans Home and Rehabilitation, Paula [Querido Kahn]
and I spoke with a physical therapist, a speech therapist, and the nursing
home’s administrator for three hours. At one point, the speech therapist
began crying and said, ‘you know, I haven’t cried during this whole
experience, but you’re complete strangers and here I am crying while I
tell you my story.’” “It was experiences like these that made us realize
we were doing something good just by listening. A lot of people were
really happy to have a fresh ear, because so many were dealing with the
same thing,” says Hamm. “So, to have people like us who were ready to
listen and take in their stories was important.”
The Occupational
Therapy Connection
In their paper, “Examining the
Role of Occupational Therapists in the 2005 Hurricane Katrina Disaster”
OTGS examines the disaster preparedness, response, and recovery
experienced by practicing occupational therapists in New Orleans in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. OTGS has
presented their work and learning at Tufts Department of Occupational
Therapy, the Assembly of Student Delegates (ASD) meeting at the American
Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) conference in Charlotte, NC and
most recently at the Massachusetts Association of Occupational Therapy
(MAOT) conference this fall.
One finding is many
occupational therapists are unclear about their roles in the aftermath of
a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, since they are rarely involved in
the disaster planning process of their particular healthcare setting.
“During the immediate response and evacuation, they [occupational
therapists in New Orleans] were assigned roles that didn’t take advantage
of their skills,” says Hamm. Hamm and her colleagues feel it’s imperative
for occupational therapists to actively pursue a seat at the table when
these discussions are held. “This is something we can start right now,”
says Hamm.
“Based on our findings, we feel as
occupational therapists, we each need to take responsibility to define our
roles in disaster preparedness, response, and relief efforts,” says Paula
Querido Kahn. “After a disaster, people’s lives are turned completely
upside down, and then they try to get back to find some normal role or
normal routine. This is clearly what occupational therapy is about.
Occupational therapists can bring people back to something familiar” says
Hamm.
Next Steps-January 2007
OTGS has literally doubled in size and
enthusiasm in response to the sharing about our work and what was learned.
In January 2007, we will return to New Orleans
to continue our disaster relief efforts and be a part of the recovery
process. This next trip has been supported via a small grant from
the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University
(http://activecitizen.tufts.edu) as well as continued financial support
from Tufts Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and Graduate Student
Council, all of which helps defer costs. OT Gulf Support will be working with the Mardi Gras Service Corps (https://www.mgscorps.org);
an organization that has renovated over 100 homes, participated in
neighborhood cleanup efforts and helped rehabilitate 10 New Orleans public
schools. They will again be volunteering and running supplemental group
activities in several health care facilities including hospitals, nursing
homes, and outpatient clinics. OTGS will also be presenting at the
AOTA conference in St. Louis, MO this April 2007.
OT Gulf Support: Amanda
Hamm, Paula Querido Kahn, Lindsay Malarky, Amy Urquhart, Gayle Offenberg,
Mike Ferrelli, Theresa Leed, Heidi Blemker, Mia Shopis, Denise Frederick,
Julia Thompson, Mallory Tillitt, Jane Crimmins, Lillian Kolack, Danielle
DeSimone, Nicole Parisi
Please direct any
specific questions or comments to:
otgulfsupport@gmail.com
