VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® celebrates its dedicated and innovative employees every chance it gets, weather or not. But following Hurricane Wilma there were dozens of stories of employees, from home health aids to medical directors, doing the unexpected. Here are a few of those stories.
Teamwork in Kendall They were a new hospice team and short-handed when they held a team meeting Thursday, October 20, with Hurricane Wilma threatening South Florida from the west. Based in Kendall, south of Miami, where Hurricane Andrew had done its worst more than a decade ago, they knew enough to take hurricanes seriously. But the discussion that late afternoon revolved around a patient and her husband who couldnt afford groceries, never mind hurricane supplies. “It wasnt anything official,” Zonia Lorenzo, R.N., recalls of the spontaneous decision to do what they could for the couple. “We all just read each others minds. We were actually out in the parking lot, getting in our cars and volunteering to pick up this or that. The next day our social worker put it all together and delivered a box of groceries and hurricane supplies to the couple.” That same day, Social Worker Teresa Punzi and Chaplain Michelle Allen called all 76 patients on the team to make sure they were “tucked in” for the storm. They repeated the calls again right after the storm. About a week later Punzi and Allen were at the couples house again when an officer came to nail an eviction notice on the door. “Once that paper goes up, you have to leave the premises,” Lorenzo found out. “But Teresa and Michelle were able to put the officer off until they found a brother who would take the husband in, while our patient was transferred to a nursing home.” Lorenzo, team manager for just eight weeks when Wilma blew through, sighs. “Finally, I can say this is a team,” she says. “I imagine other VITAS teams do stuff like this all the time, but for uswe have 76 patients and were just getting started. That puts a big strain on the team. Weve come a long way,” she says proudly. Carrying the Load in South Dade As the only RN on a hospice team serving assisted living communities, Vivian Forte is accustomed to worrying about her patients. Shortly after Wilma, Forte checked in on three patients in one community where there was no power, no generator and no immediate response from the owner. Forte, a VITAS nurse for the past year and lucky enough to have power at home, sized up the situation and offered to take home the laundry. “It was the patients clothes, the linens and the towels,” she says blithely. “I knew the staff, they provided the detergent and my daughter helped me fold.” It turned out to be eight loads. When she went back to see her patients a second time and there was still no powerand no ownershe sent her daughter to bring ice to the residents. But this time Forte wasnt going to settle for stop-gap measures. “My patients conditions were horrible; it was hot and it was dark. Patients families were bringing food. Other facilities had problems, but they had generatorsand on-site owners. This facility was the neediest. I had no intention of telling anyone what I had been doing, but I wanted to move my patients out of there, and I needed to explain how bad it was.” So word got out that Forte had taken on the care of an assisted living community in Wilmas aftermath, and shes a little embarrassed. But only a little. “It worked,” she says with a satisfied smile. “My patients were moved to Miami Heart Hospital.” Feeling Empowered at the Hilton In hospice care there is no such thing as closing the doors just because Wilma has blown in the windows. Patients need care, and caregivers need support, every day, disasters notwithstanding. On the Friday after Wilma blew through Miami-Dade County, the management staff was at work in space at the Hilton Hotel in Miami because the VITAS offices were without power. Ninety-nine percent of the people there had no power at home, either; a grim camaraderie kept them going. Toward the end of the day someone muttered something about ice cream. Half an hour later a punch bowl mounded with ice cream was wheeled into the room. “I cant tell you what that felt like!” reports Betty Bel. “For most of us, it brought the first smile of the day. The managers were so grateful to Brian [Senior General Manager Brian Payne]he really deserves major praise for all his work in the aftermath of Wilma.”
