“It was frustrating to watch TV the next few days and see my colleagues still working at both Charity and University hospitals. I felt I should still be there with my teammates trying to sort through the medical maelstrom. In then end, I guess I took care of my patients and did what my attending ordered us to do. I was lucky because I got out on Tuesday. I’m sure it got ugly in there for everyone who didn’t get to leave until Friday.
“This has proven to be an experience that not many people go through and its lessons I will not soon forget. Leadership is a quality that too often gets overlooked when assessing the qualities of a good physician. When push comes to shove, we as physicians are ultimately responsible for running the patient-care ship. Without a doubt though, I do feel a closer bond with my program colleagues. Jeff Wiese, our program director, even sent out an e-mail stating that there would be no hard feelings if any resident wanted to find a new program. So far, there have been zero transfers.
“Based on the camaraderie being expressed among my fellow residents, I don’t anticipate that there will be any ultimately when all is said and done. This fellowship has truly been inspirational and renewed my own ethical ideals about being a physician.”
Conclusion
The harrowing presence of nature pervades Crane’s The Open Boat as it does the above accounts of two medicine residents during the tragedy of Katrina. But the most significant aspect of these struggles lies in human beings’ attempts to help one another survive despite their backgrounds, vocations, or social status. There is no fighting an angry sea or an incensed hurricane; neither can be conquered. But one can learn to survive the onslaught and to care for to the best of one’s ability those fellow human beings who are also caught in the grip of nature’s immense indifference whether they be castaways on the open ocean or deserted doctors in a drowning city.
“It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common.”—Stephen Crane, The Open Boat TH
Dr. Bucci is a psychiatric resident at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a member of Tulane Medical School’s class of 2003.