How CUSOM students stepped up in the wake of Hurricane Matthew

After Hurricane Matthew dropped 18 inches of rain in Goldsboro, North Carolina, the town’s Wayne Memorial Hospital was left nearly inaccessible due to heavy flooding. Over a span of five days, the number of patients climbed to full capacity—because of road conditions, none could be discharged—while the hospital operated with roughly half its usual staff. Around 25 students from the Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine (CUSOM) in nearby Buies Creek, North Carolina, were among those lending a hand.

In addition to answering phone calls, taking patients’ vital signs and staffing nursing stations, CUSOM students also worked in the cafeteria, distributed patients’ meals. sterilized surgical equipment and washed laundry. “To sum it up in one word, they were really phenomenal,” the hospital’s emergency preparation coordinator, Jeff Brogneaux, told CUSOM, which reported on the events. “Our hospital was surrounded by water, roads were cut off, and we were really in the thick of it. But the students jumped in everywhere they were needed. There was no job too small.”

To learn more and read firsthand accounts from three CUSOM students who were in Goldsboro during the flooding, read CUSOM’s coverage of the aftermath of the storm.