GREENSBORO, N.C. — Several Triad nurses are making the trip to western North Carolina to give exhausted health care workers some relief, two returned home earlier this week.
Paden Blanchard and Lisa Geisler traveled to Haywood County last Friday. Both Blanchard and Geisler are registered nurses at Cone Health.
The pair worked for three days in a community hospital. During their stay, their goal was to give western North Carolina hospital staff a break so that they could deal with their own troubles.
"There's another nurse whose almost 70-years-old and he's hauling five-gallon buckets of water from a creek in his truck to his house so he can flush the toilet. The hospital itself is in decent condition, but hearing their stories about what they're dealing with, another nurse had to drive almost three hours to get to work because of all the road closures," remembered Blanchard.
While Blanchard and Geisler were there, they worked their normal role as Emergency Department RNs. Blanchard said by the time the pair arrived, initial injuries from the storm were mostly over with. However, long term impacts from Hurricane Helene brought about different challenges.
"Something that we did see was every time we wanted to give a patient a prescription, we had to go through: Is this pharmacy open? Is this one open? Do they have power? So, trying to get access to those outpatient would definitely be a challenge for people right now," explained Blanchard.
Both nurses were grateful for the opportunity to help.
"That's part of my goal with emergency medicine is to just help others especially those less fortunate and when I heard of a disaster in my state of course I was wondering how can I help? And I would love it if I could be hands on. I would donate money, products, whatever, but I wanted to be hands on," exclaimed Geisler.
So far, Cone Health said it sent 15 RN's west to help in the emergency department and labor and delivery unit. The healthcare system said it will be sending nurses there for another week or so.
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