Dean's Corner
It was nearly unbelievable that Ida could hit with such a punch on Katrina's 16th anniversary.
Our faculty and staff, residents and fellows, and students responded as we knew they would: honorably living out our mission regardless of the circumstances.
Every hurricane requires that physicians and surgeons sign up to stay at hospitals throughout the duration of the impending storm, facing the unknown and staying apart from family and friends.
UMC's Surgical Code Grey team was comprised of Trauma Fellow Ryan Boudreau, Tim Legare, Katherine Foley, Alex Germann, Chavi Rehani, Shivek Patel, and Javier Ordonez. This team covered everything related to surgery, including burns, trauma, general surgery, colorectal, surgical oncology, bariatrics, urology, ENT, plastic surgery, vascular, cardiac, and more for four days until they were able to be relieved by another team for the recovery.
Family Medicine faculty members Jim Campbell and Lindsey Liles, along with residents Erika Sjunnesen, Reem Sidani, Victor Wan, and Ivan Martinez served on the OMC-K Hurricane Ida Team A in Kenner from Sunday, August 29th through Thursday, September 2nd. In Bogalusa, residents Victoria Blossman, Kayleigh Lejeune, Johnny Campbell, Jr., Thai Nguyen, Patrick O'Flaherty, Katlyn Ladner and Antonio “Johnston” Waring stayed and served at the hospital throughout the storm.
Internal Medicine had a number of code grey teams (photo, below). At UMC, the Internal Medicine Code Grey Team was comprised of Dr. Hunter Hall, Dr. Corey Gregg, Dr. Ashley Van, Dr. Zee Ali, Dr. Georgis Kelly, Dr. Lee Engel, Dr. Daniel Holmes, Dr. Katie Oakden, Dr. Michael Millet, Dr. Lasha Jakeli, Dr. Eduardo Venegas, Dr. Sarah Griffin, and Dr. Andrew Burke. (Not pictured: Dr. Lara Boudreaux (MICU) and Dr. Chelsea Vaughn (MICU)). The Internal Medicine Kenner Team was made up of Dr. TreyVon Holt, Dr. Briggs Welch, Dr. Ryan Hanson, Dr. Michael Phillips, Dr. Ross McCarron, and Dr. Kristi Boudreaux.
Dr. Francois Ancelet (below, left) and Dr. Leslie Lindley (below, right) single-handedly covered the Lallie Kemp Emergency Department for five days working alternating 12-hour shifts during and after Hurricane Ida. This included dealing with the nursing home residents who were transported from the warehouse where several died and many more had to be hospitalized.
Dr. Felton Winfield is credited with the very heavy lifting of covering the entire OB service at Touro without any residents in order to adhere to Touro's policy. Dr. Sarah Yockey replaced him after several days. It was very challenging and, combined with COVID, an exceptional endeavor. At UMC, Drs. Amie Jernigan and Antonio Traina were at the helm and held down the fort for days covering the LSU and Tulane GYN and GYNONC surgical services.
Likewise, Dr. Ira Padnos from Anesthesiology worked through the storm at UMC without residents, while residents Meredith Shaw and Brittni Lanoux “tag teamed” with each other for Ochsner Kenner.
Dr. Al Dujaili provided in-house call for Ophthalmology at UMC. When UMC subsequently allowed, Dr. Barron, Dr. Rao and Dr. Reinoso relieved Dr. Al Dujaili with Dr. Rao and Dr. Reinoso providing in-house call. Although neither Dr. Barron nor Dr. Reinoso were officially on-call, they volunteered their services. Ophthalmology residents Kush Patel, Nicole Legare, and Chris Lasecki provided in-house call at UMC.
Orthopaedics had several teams covering different hospitals: Peter Krause, along with residents Cristina Terhoeve, Marc Schatz, Rocio Crabb, and Adam Haydel covered UMC while Michael Hartman covered Ochsner Kenner. Michael Heffernan with residents Adam Miller and Patrik Suwak covered Children's Hospital.
Pathology's blood bank pathologist Shaun Lawicki was in-house after the storm to oversee blood usage.
Radiology faculty and residents provided coverage at UMC. This included department chairman Dr. Leonard Bok along with faculty Dr. Michael Maristany, Dr. Alexandra Fairchild, Dr. Mignonne Morrell, Dr. Joe Park, Dr. Brooke Morrell, Dr. Doug Casey, Dr. Hector Ferral, Dr. Bill Tiemann, Dr. Bahri Ustunsoz, Dr. Richard Marshall, Dr. Jane Clayton, Dr. Eric Wallace, Dr. Joe Reid, Dr. David Smith, Dr. Bradley Spieler, Dr. Lillian Murphy, Dr. Raman Danrad, Dr. Kurosh Safavi and Dr. Roque Ferreyro provided coverage alongside residents Dr. Rebecca Chason, Dr. Cody Rigsbee, Dr. Asmar Ghani, Dr. Ricky Declet-Bauzo, Dr. Paresh Rangani, Dr. Francisco Brito Encarnacion, Dr. Julie Allen, Dr. Mae Igi and Dr. John-Paul Grenier.
Neurosurgery provided coverage to three hospitals: UMC, West Jefferson Medical Center, and Children's. At UMC, staff coverage was provided by Dr. Gabriel Tender with majority of the resident coverage being shared by Dr. Jared Robichaux and Dr. John Wilson. WJMC was covered by Chairman Dr. Frank Culicchia with resident coverage split between Dr. Adam Podet and Dr. Kevin Morrow. While the majority of resident coverage was shared between the four residents above, it was “an all-hands-on deck” with every resident taking part of some coverage of their two major teaching hospitals: Dr. Taylor Giorlamo, Dr. Roboan Guillen, Dr. Austin Crabill and Dr. Wesley Schoap. Children's coverage was performed by staff physicians, with Dr. Jerome Volk and Dr. Tola Roberts alternating the coverage per hospital protocols.
Pediatrics had a substantial Code Grey Resident Team at Children's Hospital, made up of Dr. James Connick, Dr. Andrea Ito, Dr. Kayla Griese, Dr. Kelsey Quarls, Dr. Mike Evers, Christophe deLespinasse, Dr. Jesse Coren, Dr. Hiba Elaasar, Dr. Courtney Gautreaux, Dr. Kimiknu Mentore, Dr. Sarah Short, Dr. Chad Lyman, Dr. Joey Sansone, Dr. Paige Prevot, Dr. Adam Prevot, Dr. Jantzen Collette, Dr. Devyn Rohfls, Dr. Ashley Reeves, Dr. Alex Ranucci, Dr. Nicole Vegh, Dr. Emma Levenson, Dr. Mandy Granier, and Dr. Amy Bearison. Angelle Billiot and Sarah Gammill covered pediatric surgery, and Kurt Mueller covered ENT. Christian Nieves and Maria Espanol covered pediatric hematology and oncology. Psychiatry was covered by Anastasia Daragan, Josh Culotta, Ryan Adell, Scott Lavie, David Nguyen and Antoinette Laurel. (photos, below)
Many Pediatric faculty also stayed throughout the hurricane and served many hospitals throughout the area, including: Dr. Jay Hescock and Dr. Amanda Messer (Children's Hospital Hospitalist Service); Dr. Maria Velez and Dr. Zachary Leblanc (Children's Hospital Hematology/Oncology); Dr. Mike Brumund, Dr. Stefani Samples, Dr. James Krulisky, and Dr. Tom Kimball (Children's Hospital Cardiology); Dr. Kurt Piggott and Dr. Cara Lasley (Children's Hospital Cardiac ICU); Dr. Colleen LeBlanc (Children's Hospital Gastroenterology); Dr. Zach Daniels, Dr. Richelle Monier, Dr. Amy Creel, and Dr. Gary Duhon (Children's Hospital Pediatric ICU); Dr. Diego Aviles and Dr. Carolyn Straatmann (Children's Hospital Nephrology); Dr. Dana Rivera and Dr. Emily Masoumy (Children's Hospital Neonatology/NICU); Dr. Raegan Gupta (Touro Infirmary Neonatology/NICU); Dr. Nathalie Medeiros and Dr. Marcella Houser (Touro Infirmary Well Baby Nursery); Dr. Brian Barkemeyer (East Jefferson Medical Center Neonatology); Dr. Christy Mumphrey (Slidell Memorial Medical Center Neonatology/NICU); and Dr. Peter Joslyn (North Oaks Medical Center Neonatology/NICU.
UMC's Psychiatry Code Grey Team (see photo, below) was comprised of Robert Detrinis, MD (Tulane faculty), Michael Dicharry, MD (LSU faculty), Varad Deshmukh, MD (LSU PGY3), Mark Townsend, MD (LSU faculty), Erich Conrad, MD (LSU faculty), and David Fein, MD (LSU faculty). Dr. Creedon also volunteered his time at UMC throughout the storm and the days following. The activation team at UMC was quickly relieved by many faculty and residents to continue care during the aftermath of the storm, including Lee Michals MD, Erin Capone, MD, Stephen Giepert, MD, Maeghan Davis, MD, Steven Ross, MD, Jennifer Creedon, MD, Lochlann McGee, MD, Morgan Brooks, MD, Nicole Crozat, MD, Jennifer Jernberg, MD, Francis Nguyen, MD, Brad Landwehr, MD, Eric Wilde, MD, Josh Culotta, MD, Hillary Gary, MD, Ryan Adell, MD, Sarah Stuart, DO, Claire Franklin, MD, Rose Tusa, MD, John Bardugon, MD, Rachel Foret, MD, and Sara Karnes, MD. Drs. Megan Campbell and Dan Waldman provided services throughout the storm to Children's Hospital. It was a tremendous team effort put forth by all with many sacrifices made.
Others from Psychiatry also volunteered their time in a very hands-on way after the storm. Psychiatry residents, faculty and their partners, including Stephen Giepert, Nicole Crozat, Ernie and Rosa Miller, and Tom and Margaret Baier, recently joined a group of Americorps volunteers working with the sbp.usa in a day of service to help “shrink the time between disaster and recovery.” On a typical New Orleans' hot, humid day they donned PPE to tackle mold remediation for an elderly Houma couple with a home with extensive roof damage and resulting extensive mold. Together with the other volunteers they helped remove flooring and to continue to gut the home for complete mold remediation.
In Physiology, many became heroes during the power outage, saving precious samples from malfunctioning freezers (Dr. Liz Simon), alerting leadership to beeping freezers (Muhammed Farooq, Jessi Cucinello-Ragland and Dr. Mike Salling), volunteering to shuffle ice so that animal rooms could be kept cool (Dr. Maureen Basha), leading a Go Fund Me campaign to support those who incurred expenses with the evacuation (Dr. Nick Gilpin), sending supplies and a generator for one of our faculty (Jessi Cucinello-Ragland and Dr. Robert Siggins), and powering through to keep the NHSN conference going as scheduled (Melissa Prestwood).
Many of our SOM family continued to step up and serve the community in the aftermath of the storm. The School of Medicine's Community Outreach Rebuilding and Education (CORE) student interest group joined forces with students from the School of Graduate Studies and the School of Public Health to organize a campus-wide collection for those impacted by the hurricane. The student-led collection was coordinated with partnering institution Nicholls State University in Thibodeaux.
Students collected non-perishable food, diapers, baby food, baby formula, feminine hygiene products, toiletries, toilet paper, paper towels, first aid supplies, cleaning supplies, clothing, backpacks, blankets, and more than $400 which was given out as gift cards. Graduate students Callie Scull, Justin Smith, and MD/PhD student Jacob Elnaggar in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Parasitology made two deliveries to Thibodaux. Dr. John Doucet, Nicholls State University Dean of Science and Technology, and his team distributed the donations to the affected Bayou regions including Lafourche, Terrebonne, Assumption, St. James, and St. Charles Parishes. Dr. Doucet, who also has an adjunct faculty appointment in the LSUHSC Department of Genetics, received his doctorate from the Neurosciences Center of Excellence in 1992 under the mentorship of Dr. Nicolas Bazan.
Another graduate student, Laura Monteagudo Romero, in the Department of Physiology, stepped forward shortly after the storm to volunteer around the city. Two days after Hurricane Ida hit south Louisiana, she and her friends started volunteering with World Central Kitchen, an international disaster relief organization. They helped make sandwiches, pack food, and deliver the packages to community centers in New Orleans and other hard-hit areas. During this time, they also met former mayor Mitch Landrieu, who was also helping the organization (photo, below).
With the power outage came malfunctioning equipment and the potential for less-than-ideal housing conditions for animals. Some students and faculty helped shuffle large bags of ice into the animal rooms to make sure they remained in proper conditions. In particular, MD/PhD student Kyle LaPenna in the Department of Pharmacology rode out the storm on campus and was a significant helping hand to Dr. Leslie Birke in maintaining animal care.
We are sure there are many more stories of service during Ida that we haven't heard. We are grateful to all of those who responded to the needs they saw and honorably represented the School of Medicine while living out our mission.