Dr. Howe Visits Project HOPE Trained Nurses Caring for Earthquake Victims in Wuhan

The Zhongnan Hospital, overlooking East Lake, holds a special spot in the hearts of the citizens of Wuhan. Soon to number 2000 beds, it is the principal teaching hospital of the Wuhan University Health Science Center. Its President, Zhou Yungfeng, a noted radiation oncologist, is also the Dean of the Medical School. He is a strong supporter of the HOPE Nursing School.

The School's leadership, as a catalyst in the reform of nursing education in China, is being played out in the Hospital. Its well educated Master's prepared nurses are being promoted to Head Nurse positions, within two years of graduation. Their analytic skills and well-honed research training are seen as adding value to the increasing complex management of patients requiring tertiary care.

This was exemplified on the Hospital's patient floor, now named "Ward of Love." Thirty-six patients, recently transferred from Sichuan Province, with earthquake-related injuries are receiving the care of the School's graduates. The nurses are quick to point out that the ward could have been described as the "disaster ward; instead, it's called the "caring ward."

The patients, ranging in age from 26 to 90, have received, or soon will receive, surgery for trauma diagnoses, orthopedic and neurosurgical in nature. We visited three of them. Two were in their nineties, with leg fractures. Each spoke with a Sichuan dialect--and was hard of hearing. Even so, they conveyed a sense of gratitude for the attention they were receiving from the nursing staff. The third was a 50 year old government worker with rib fractures and a hemothorax. He was without pain and easy to engage in conversation.

The Medical Director of the ward is an orthopedist. He described the three surgeries that he had performed earlier in the day. His counterpart, the Head Nurse, was effusive in her pride of the focus of the entire Hospital on the victims and their families. This is reflective of what we witnessed in Chengdu and, later, in Shanghai, as well as Wuhan, a country-wide embrace of those effected by this tragedy.