The level of skill and attention required in the aftermath of a mass shooting is significant, even for healthcare workers experienced with trauma care.
Several area hospital systems responded to Sunday’s mass shooting and one Dayton hospital has found fellowship with colleagues across the country.
Late Monday morning several dozen trauma workers at Miami Valley Hospital gathered in a room that has served as a response headquarters since a mass shooting took the lives of nine people in Dayton’s Oregon District, early Sunday morning.
Miami Valley President, Michael Uhl, has brought the workers in to let them know their lunch that day was being provided by other trauma workers in El Paso. Just a day before the shooting in Dayton, 22 people were killed and dozens of others were wounded when a man opened fire in a Walmart store.
“Obviously it's been a tragic weekend across United States with two mass shooting incidents,” said Uhl. “One of our colleagues in healthcare at the University Medical Center of El Paso has sent our team here food, being subs and desserts, today because of the work that our team did, and our event at that occurred here in Dayton Ohio.”
Uhl says the El Paso trauma team told him they received the same kind of support from other communities and wanted to pay it forward.
Beth Heyse is director of Surgical Services at Miami Valley and understands the outreach from El Paso, whose workers were providing the same type of care to their citizens.
“It's the knowing the job that we have to do here and going straight into action, getting patients that are critical at a moment's notice, but to have it at this mass extent speaks to how quickly everybody was willing to come in to help support each other and take care of our community,” she said.
The hospital workers gather in the room echoed Heyse's sentiments and said support is what it’s all about.
One worker said, “I always told my husband, if something happens I will leave and go to work because that's our job, that's what we're here for.”
Several other workers agreed, saying, “That’s exactly right. We’re a family.”
