Chapter 01: Emergency Management and Leadership
Files
Description
In this chapter, Dr. Porter provides an overview of what leaders will experience by taking part in Emergency Management. She notes the teamwork that can lead to long-lasting relationships. She also explains that emergency management allows a leader to see the “nooks and crannies” of an institution.
Identifier
PorterC_01_20180104_C01
Publication Date
1-4-2018
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN, Oral History Interview, January 04, 2018
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Overview; Leadership; On Leadership; Funny Stories; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Women and Minorities at Work; MD Anderson Culture; Working Environment
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It is January 4, 2018, the first time I’ve said that date aloud, and it’s about twelve minutes after ten in the morning. I’m in the office of Dr. Carol Porter, who is Chief Nursing Officer. We’re in Pickens Tower, on the eighteenth floor, and we are here today, to talk about Dr. Porter’s observations and experiences surrounding [Hurricane] Harvey. This is an interview that’s being conducted for our subseries, Making History Now, and I just want a couple of details. I wanted to note that you were recruited to MD Anderson in October of 2016, correct?
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
That’s when I started, yes.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s when you started. This is the first of two planned interview sessions, we might do more if we need that, and I wanted to thank you for devoting your time to the project.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Well, thank you. Of course, of course.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, I wanted to kind of start with sort of a general question, because I know, as part of your mandate here at MD Anderson, you’re interested in strengthening nursing leadership.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Yes.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I wanted just to capture, at the outset, your observations on how does preparation in emergency preparedness dovetail or feed nursing leadership?
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
That’s a great question. First of all, you have to have experience in emergency management. You cannot have experience and take courses while you’re on the job, but I believe that if you come with experience in emergency management and take the courses, it’s transferrable in the country. I have the fortunate position to have over twenty years’ experience in emergency management, while being a nursing leader in New York and New Jersey. So, I believe that in order to be an effective emergency management leader, you have to be extremely confident and you have to know your subject matter. That’s why it’s hard if somebody just takes a course and then is thrown into an emergency. If that happens, hopefully there are people around that have been through emergencies that can guide the person that just took the course. I have been through many, many emergencies in New York City, the major ones: 9/11, the blackout across the city of New York, a major fire in an academic medical center, coordination of dirty bomb drills, I was a bioterrorism coordinator. So I come to MD Anderson with that little niche, which is not—that’s unusual for a nursing leader at any level.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What does going through an emergency of the types that you’ve just listed, what does that teach you about an institution?
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
It teaches whether people work together, is teamwork present. In a severe emergency like I mentioned, it’s hard to—it’s a little too late to teach people. So, it emphasizes the importance of ongoing drills and education. It’s not a once a year thing, it’s a frequent thing, because if you’re in an institution that doesn’t do that, then you have to overcome that hurdle, and if you’re an institution that drills and it’s just part of the fabric, it’s very seamless. The other thing, I think it brings people together. When you go through any kind of emergency, emotional trauma, whatever, at the end of it, you form relationships that you’ll have, that you never—it would have taken you five years to form. At the end of it, people have come together because they went through it together. Since it’s not common, I think it’s good for other disciplines, to see a nursing leader in the role of incident commander. It’s unusual.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why is that?
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
I don’t know. I try to promote it almost every conference I speak at. I always do a little talk about the fact that I think it’s important to find your niche, like what makes you different than the crowd, and then once you find what you love, then be really excellent at it. I always suggest getting involvement in emergency management, because that’s an area that most nursing leaders don’t have the experience.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So it really distinguishes you as a leader.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Right.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
If you warm to that.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Right. Also, if you happen to work in a hospital, nurses are the biggest staffing pool. So it’s good for the nurses, to see the nursing leader in the Command Center and being confident and directing people and checking on people. It’s just another leadership trait. I wish more people would be—you have to be interested in it, because it’s really something that—I mean, when I was a bioterrorism coordinator, that was a brand new title, I had to learn what does that mean. I was on the Coordinating Council in the city of New York and I learned. But I think it’s—you know, there’s many niches in nursing but that’s just one of them.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. I was wondering too, I mean I’ve had many conversations with people in nursing, and they talk about the struggle that—I mean there’s a hierarchy in a medical community.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Right.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And nurses are not necessarily at the top of that hierarchy. Now, does it help if a nursing leader emerges in an emergency situation, does that help establish credibility, I mean what’s the impact of that?
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
The impact to the hospital?
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Maybe on how nurses are perceived.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Okay. Well, I think it definitely, it’s definitely they’re curious about it, I felt people were curious. When I appeared, when Harvey hit and I came into the Command Center, there were two physicians in there acting as co-incident commanders, and they had been there for a while and I said to them, “Why don’t you both go to sleep,” and they kind of looked at me and I said, “I have twenty years’ experience in this, you’re safe. I’ve been in an incident commander role several times and I could certainly allow you guys to go to sleep.” So I think it was a learning for other people and I think that’s why the Executive Council of the Faculty Senate, invited me to speak to them. They had a lot of questions about how did you learn this, where did it start and all that. And I think it’s a great opportunity, especially for somebody that’s relatively new to the organization, to get into every nook and cranny at the hospital that you may not have reached. All of a sudden you’re communicating with everybody.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, yeah. And they get to know you, it’s a back and forth.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Yeah, of course, and your style. We had some fun, we had some humorous moments. When you’re under stress, people usually eat more carbohydrates, and that’s not just in Texas, that’s everywhere. So, when you entered the Command Center, there was bagels and donuts and you name it, and I’m not a big carbohydrate eater and at one point, I was talking a lot and they said, “You have to have a Shipley Donut,” and I said, “What’s a Shipley Donut?” They said, “You don’t know what a Shipley Donut is?” I said, “No, I’ve never had one.” So, I said sure, I took a bite, and I came silent, and everybody went nuts, they went crazy, they said, “Oh my God, Carol is not talking.” That was just kind of, it broke the stress, they Tweeted it out to the world, unfortunately, and I had a Shipley Donut and it was delicious.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It was a human moment.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
Yeah.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
A human moment with a leader, which is really cool.
Carol Porter, DNP, RN, FAAN:
So, I think that was—I mean Dr. Karen Lu was the one who Tweeted it out. It was kind of the camaraderie piece of it.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure. That’s part of building those relationships you were mentioning earlier.
Recommended Citation
Porter, Carol DNP, RN, FAAN and Rosolowski, Tacey A., "Chapter 01: Emergency Management and Leadership" (2018). Interview Chapters. 1375.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1375
Conditions Governing Access
Open
