VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System supports Hurricane Florence relief efforts

Sep 20, 2018 at 11:00 am by bryan


Two members of the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System (TVHS) team departed for Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Sept. 20 to support the Durham VA Medical Center in the wake of Hurricane Florence. Shannon Anderson, a registered nurse, and Dana Franklin, a licensed clinical social worker, will spend at least 14 days providing backfill support for Durham VA staff.

The Durham VA Medical Center needs assistance because some VA employees are unable to travel to work and others are assisting in other storm-damaged areas.

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"Initial indications are that they will be working in their respective fields as backfill for the Durham VA," said Phil Carmona, TVHS Emergency Manager. "However, they have been briefed to be flexible as they may be moved further into the incident zone."

Anderson's experience in disaster response includes a deployment to support Hurricane Katrina operations and more recently to Puerto Rico in support of Hurricane Maria operations. She is trained in critical care, emergency medicine, and respiratory therapy.

Franklin's social worker experience includes 29 years with the Nashville VA, starting as a social work intern after graduate school at Florida State University. She has done medical mission work overseas through her church and is the chairperson of the International Awareness Committee for her college sorority, Delta-Sigma-Theta.

TVHS is an integrated tertiary health care system comprised of two hospitals, the Alvin C. York Campus in Murfreesboro and the Nashville Campus, as well as more than a dozen community-based outpatient clinics located in Tennessee and Kentucky. TVHS provides ambulatory care, primary care, and secondary care in acute medicine and surgery, specialized tertiary care, transplant services, spinal cord injury outpatient care, and a full range of extended care and mental health services.

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