The doctors and Nurses of New Orleans Charity Hospital

Fox News interviewed a nurse at New Orleans Charity Hospital last night. She and her fellow nurses and the physicians had been fighting against everything for the last few days, disease, injury, diminishing supplies and food and water living and working in a island without outside help.
She said they kept it all going because that is what doctors and nurses do and what they accomplished was done without help from the city, state, FEMA or anyone else. That dedication and focus on patient care is what doctors and nurses are all about. Making patient care and welfare first is what was imprinted in my limbic cortex at the same institution over 35 years ago. My wife and I became doctors there at LSU and Tulane Medical School and "Big Charity" and our hearts are breaking as we sit glued to the TV and Web absorbed in the misery as memories flood our minds of a time of youth and promise as we underwent the transformation from young adults in our early twenties to physicians. We are so proud of the current generation of faculty and students at the two med schools fighting the good fight in the face of impossible conditions and risk to themselves. Dr. Roy Poses and others on their web sites do a great service by pointing out and fighting against the outside forces that erode the core values of physicians but , by God, when the chips are down, the core values are there as the actions of the doctors at Charity and other N.O. hospitals illustrate so heroically.