In September, the Nurse Alliance partnered with disaster relief experts to prepare our nurse members with valuable training, information, and first-hand accounts of how to navigate disaster assistance as part of a local and national rapid response system.Â
Nurses from across the state heard from expert trainers and took an in-depth look at the work we need to do as healthcare providers to build a growing network of coordinated training in order to deploy skilled nurses who are educated to assist in disaster relief areas.
In 2018, in the days following Hurricane Michael, the Nurse Alliance received a call that nurses were urgently needed to assist in the heavily damaged areas of Florida.
Within hours two of our nurses, Cathy Stoddart (Allegheny General Hospital) and Wendy Snyder (Heritage Valley Beaver), were ready and deployed to the devastated areas, not sure what they would encounter. Just days later, more union nurses – Ariel Noorparvar, Jeri Torrance, Kathy Dematteis (PA Dept. of Health) and Andrea Morgan (Moses Taylor Hospital) joined the effort.
As nurses so often do, they jumped into action first and figured out their lives later.
SEIU has a history of assisting with disaster relief. And now through a new agreement with the International Medical Corps, nurses and other healthcare workers are able to receive even more training so they can best assist when disaster strikes.