NORTH CAROLINA, USA — Mercy Hospital nurses traveled to North Carolina this week to help victims of Hurricane Helene. Brooke Harp, the Manager of Patient Care Services at Mercy, said she knew she had to take action.
"I was thinking, you know, I wish I could help. What can I do to help?" Harp said. "And then that evening, I got included in a text message about a meeting that happened at the hospital at the end of the day where the state of North Carolina had reached out to the state of Arkansas and said, 'We need nurses and can you help?' When I got that, I thought, 'Well, this is the plan, like maybe God had a plan and put this text message in my hands for this reason.'"
Around 11 nurses from Mercy Hospitals in the area are giving basic medical assistance to hurricane victims.
"We'll be working in community health nursing," Harp said. "We'll be doing nursing assessments, nursing intake, and we'll be passing medications, addressing minor injuries. We could also be helping with coordinating medical appointments or helping people to get medications that they do not have access to, transportation to, and from those appointments, just general community services that are needed."
Harp said she felt drawn to going because she knows what it's like to go through devastating times.
"It's very heavy on my heart," she said. "We can relate to the destruction and the devastation and the rebuilding process that they have just begun. I do feel very blessed to work for a hospital system that is there to serve their community. Sometimes that community is bigger than our state lines, and so I feel blessed to be able to travel there and help."
Harp knows she and the rest of the nurses heading to the Tar Heel State will make a huge difference for these people.
"It's a great help. There's definitely a need for nurses and physicians and other organizations to come in and support that community and help them take some of the burden off of their own community so that the people that live there can focus on their rebuilding and we can take care of some of the basic needs that they don't have," Harp said.
Harp told us that she expects to be in North Carolina until Saturday, Oct. 19. However, she said she would stay longer if her services are still needed.
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