Citation

DiCarlo RP, Hilton CW, Chauvin SW, Delcarpio JB, Lopez FA, McClugage SG, Letourneau JG, Smith R, Hollier LH. Acad. Med. 2007; 82(8): 745-756.

Affiliation

Office of Medical Education, Department of Medicine, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, USA. rdicar@lsuhsc.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Association of American Medical Colleges, Publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/ACM.0b013e3180cc279b

PMID

17762247

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on August 29, 2005. The flooding in New Orleans left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and threatened to close businesses and institutions, including Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine and its two principle training sites in New Orleans, Charity Hospital and University Hospital. In the weeks immediately after the storm, LSU School of Medicine resumed undergraduate and graduate medical education in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and elsewhere. The authors discuss the specific challenges they faced in relocating administrative operations, maintaining the mission of medical education, and dealing with the displacement of faculty, staff, residents, students, and patients, and the processes used to overcome these challenges. They focus on the school's educational missions, but challenges faced by the offices of student affairs, faculty affairs, and admissions are also discussed. LSU School of Medicine's experience provides lessons about organizational preparedness for a mass disaster that may be of interest to other medical schools.

Language: en