Nashville area nurses among those helping aid exhausted Asheville hospital after Helene

**NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN** · Oct 6

The Tennessean Oct. 4, 2024

Nashville area nurses among those helping aid exhausted Asheville hospital after Helene

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A bevy of Nashville area nurses spent days in storm-battled Asheville, North Carolina, relieving weary clinicians and caring for a teeming emergency room before returning home Friday afternoon.

They worked beside more than 100 clinicians from across the country who descended on Mission Hospital, where the typical daily patient count of 275 swelled to 600. Many of the patients were critically ill and moaning in pain from broken bones, head gashes and other injuries blamed on Tropical Storm Helene.

About 300 patients poured in during a six-hour period, some with make-shift bandages and slings. One person had caution tape wrapped around an injury as a tourniquet, said Matt Riester, a TeamHealth physician who oversees the emergency department at the hospital....

...Nurses used a whiteboard to triage patients, placing them in beds side-by-side in pods of 12 so doctors could quickly move from one to the other....

HCA set up mobile units with kitchens, bathrooms and handwashing stations and mini marts inside the medical centers to provide doctors, nurses and other hospital staff with free groceries, including food, water and toiletries....

...The hospital, perched atop a hill just south of downtown Asheville, dodged flooding that submerged much of Buncombe County....

,,,More than 1,000 hospital workers have been sleeping at the hospital since the flooding, Kody Kinsley, secretary of the state's Department of Health and Human Services, said during the news conference Monday.