VNA/Hospice’s Own on FL Disaster Team
Marti Brown, RN, MSN, FNP, is a valued team member of Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice of the Florida Keys (VNA/Hospice). She works from the VNA/Hospice Upper Keys and Middle Keys Corporate office in Tavernier and it the only representative from Monroe County who is part of the Federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), as well as a member of the Florida State Medical Response Team and the Monroe County Medical Reserve Corps.
DMAT is an important part of the Federal Disaster Emergency program. Members can be deployed at a moment’s notice for any type of disaster. Their last big deployment was in November, 2012 to Long Beach, New York, to provide clinical and medical services to those who were affected by Hurricane Sandy. Their work environment was laid out like a M.A.S.H. unit. They survived on Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) and peanut butter and jelly on hotdog and hamburger buns after working twelve hour shifts. The first week alone they clocked eighty-two hours, the second week ten hours more than the first. Combine those hours with working in temperatures as low as 20 degrees is something that seasoned Floridians are unfamiliar with.
The Florida team did bring a bit of sunshine to the northern state in the form of warm hugs. More importantly they provided compassionate care to those in need. Marti Brown however went one step further, being the only team member from the Florida Keys, she hung the Conch Republic Flag in the treatment tent, which garnered much attention from their patients. The dedication and compassion that Ms. Brown has shown through her many years of service, is exactly the type of dedication and compassion that she, and all the nurses of VNA/Hospice, has been practicing on a daily basis since 1984, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
It is because of that type of dedication and compassion that VNA/Hospice provided over a quarter million dollars of unfunded charity care to residents of Monroe County last year. To make an on line tax deductible donation in support of their programs, visit their web site at www.vnahospicekeys.org.