Anna Pou was a caring, driven, intelligent, and sociable woman. Although she came from a family full of doctors, she was not ever quite sure that that was what she would do in life. However, when Anna was in college she attended a pool party with some friends at an old restored Plantation house. The pool party was going well and everyone was having fun until a playful race between two of the party guests occurred. The victor of the race playfully held his defeated friend under water and it was all laughs until the victor realized that his friend was not playing around. The young man was pulled out of the pool and everyone at the party could see his now grayish complexion and they all panicked, except for Anna (Fink, 2013). Anna Pou came to…show more content… In the public health field, one needs to be able to appropriately assess situations and decide what course of action will be most beneficial to the parties involved. Sometimes, primary level care is not an option and secondary or tertiary level care has too be implemented. At the pool party Anna appropriately assessed the situation, unknowingly bypassed primary care and went straight to secondary care by performing CPR, and ultimately saved the young man’s life. Fast forwarding to much later in Pou’s life, she was once again faced with having to assess and appropriately respond to a much more difficult situation. By the fifth day after Katrina, Memorial hospital was in horrid condition. The heat was sweltering, the water had risen to dangerous levels, many patients had died, many patients still needed to be evacuated, supplies were running low, and the remaining hospital staff were feeling hopeless and demoralized (Fink, 2013). By this time, it had been brought to Pou’s attention to consider euthanizing certain patients with a strong combination of morphine and benzodiazepine (Fink, 2013). The patients that she was…show more content… This lack of effective communication can be partly blamed on poor communication structure. Although the medical unit as a whole functioned fairly well, there were still gaps in the communication and the organization (Broz et al., 2009). Some of these communication gaps came from the building’s phone lines not working the first week, internet access being inadequate, and a different form of leadership was implemented at the time of the incident which further confused the units’ staff (Broz et al., 2009). This lack of communication and increase in confusion puts stress upon the medical staff thus causing them to work in a tense environment and affecting their work
