When Pattie Smith talks about her work as a volunteer nurse for the American Red Cross, her memories pour out -- and they are not the run-of-the-mill experiences you might expect. They are memories of people struggling to cope with disaster, sometimes hundreds of people at a time. 

She remembers people who dumped snow into their toilet tanks to flush them after a freeze in Texas burst pipes. People trapped in their homes by floods, unable to get to a shelter. People who had mud coming out of their faucets. People who were sleeping when a fire started and went into a store barefoot and in their pajamas to replace the clothes they lost.

And perhaps more than anything, people who fled disaster without their prescription medicines or medical equipment. For 10 weeks after hurricanes in Texas and Louisiana in 2020, well into the COVID-19 pandemic, Pattie and nine other nurses made 3,500 calls on behalf of people who had lost their medications or run out of them and couldn’t get them refilled or replaced. And sometimes it was just a wellness check.

Pharmacies had been closed by the hurricanes. Insurance companies didn’t want to pay for a replacement supply of meds. Often, Pattie and the other nurses advocating for their clients by telephone were put on hold for hours.  

“Anything that could possibly go wrong, it did,” Pattie said. 

Yet they made those 3,500 phone calls, and they usually succeeded in getting the medicines the Red Cross clients needed.

But the small incidents, the personal catastrophes, require work and ingenuity too. One woman told Pattie she was having trouble replacing the clothes she lost in a house fire because she wore a large size that wasn’t readily available. Pattie started calling thrift stores. Each agreed to deliver the clothes it had in the woman’s size to one store, where she could pick out what she needed. 

The phone calls “made a very big difference in someone’s life,” Pattie said. “That’s one little extra step that this particular group of nurses in this region takes. We deliver comfort, and that’s the Red Cross mission.”

As the Red Cross honors its nurse volunteers during National Nurses Week, which runs May 6-12, it is people like Pattie that the organization is recognizing. The South Florida Region has 46 healthcare professional volunteers: registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, licensed vocational nurses, nurse practitioners, and advanced nurse practitioners, as well as EMTs, paramedics, physician assistants, and doctors. 

“Our role as nurses in the Red Cross is to establish the pre-disaster healthcare needs of the clients” and make sure they get the same level of need filled after a disaster, said Maria Gubnitsky, a registered nurse and the Disaster Health Services South Florida Regional Program Lead. 

“We fill that gap, meeting the disaster-related needs. … We serve as the liaison. The client may be overwhelmed, they may have lost everything.”

Red Cross doesn’t provide medical care. But if in a disaster someone loses prescription medicine or durable medical equipment -- hearing aids, nebulizers, wheelchairs, dentures, prescription eyeglasses, walkers, CPAP machines, and other items -- the organization’s nurses work to get a replacement. 

“If you lose it in a fire, we’re going to make sure you have it as soon as possible,” Maria said.

Pattie, a retired RN who joined the Red Cross in Naples, Florida four years ago, stands out for her passion, for the lengths she goes to as an advocate who won’t be stopped just because someone says no, Maria said.  

Maria recalls a case that illustrates how hard Pattie will work for a client. A man lost his service dog, his only family, in a fire that also destroyed his home. “This person’s world collapsed,” she recalled. 

As Smith worked to replace the client’s prescription medicines and medical items he had lost, she worked for more than a month with caseworker Maureen MacLaughlin to get the service dog replaced. 

Pattie’s memory of the same incident is vivid because of the support she got from the Red Cross. The client, a veteran, had lost his home and was staying in a hotel. Without a permanent address, he didn’t qualify for a replacement service animal through the usual channels. He couldn’t have an untrained dog in the hotel. Eventually, working with the Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces team, she located a trainer who agreed to train the dog at his home if the client would go there for the lessons. It was unconventional, but it worked.

“That was one of the most rewarding things we’ve done,” Pattie said. “With the Red Cross, you’re encouraged to go outside the box, as long as it does the client good.” 

Maria wasn’t surprised by Pattie’s persistence. “There are days when we have numerous cases or just a couple cases that require extra attention and advocacy. I know Pattie is the person I can reach out to. I don’t think she’s ever said no. She’s the one who raises her hand. She really fulfills the mission.”

Nurses are a crucial part of the Red Cross's mission: to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found. Their role goes back to the roots of the Red Cross, which was founded by Clara Barton, an amateur nurse who provided aid to soldiers during the Civil War. Almost from the beginning, they worked in disaster relief and support for the military.  

Today, in addition to helping people, who have been hit by disaster, Red Cross nurses work in military hospitals, teach courses ranging from CPR & First Aid to disaster preparedness, and in some states, work on blood drives. They are members of the Integrated Care and Condolence Team, made up of individuals from different Red Cross units who provide comfort and support to people whose loved one was injured or hospitalized or died in a disaster.  

In some places across the country, Red Cross nurses are involved in the COVID-19 vaccination program. Although they’re currently not giving vaccinations in the South Florida Region, they’re ready if they are asked to, Maria said. Dealing with epidemics isn’t new to them: They helped fight a severe yellow fever outbreak around Jacksonville, Florida in 1888, cared for victims of the Spanish flu in the U.S. after World War I, and helped communities during the polio epidemic of the 1940s and ‘50s.

If you are a licensed health care professional* and are interested in becoming a Disaster Health Services responder or in becoming a volunteer with the Red Cross, please visit redcross.org.

*In order to be a DHS team member, your health care license has to be active and unencumbered. DHS team members consist of nurses – registered nurse (RN), licensed practical nurse (LPN), licensed vocational nurse (LVN), advanced nurse practitioner (ARNP), nurse practitioner (NP) – EMT’s, paramedics, physician assistants, and doctors.

Written by Marjie Lambert