Katrina Memories: The Fundamental Right

As the floodwaters following Katrina inundated 80 percent of the city, another type of flood threatened to overwhelm the medical system in and around New Orleans — a flood of injured and chronically ill people. To address that need, physicians in residency training at the Tulane School of Medicine worked more than 20,000 hours in the first month following the storm.

“The glue that held us together was our commitment to the underserved and patients that had nowhere else to go,” says Dr. Jeff Wiese, associate dean for graduate medical education and the program director for the internal medicine residency program.

In this multimedia presentation, the final in a series on remembering Hurricane Katrina, Wiese discusses the important role Tulane doctors played following the storm.

Dr. Jeff Wiese, associate dean of graduate medical education, discusses what motivated the young doctors from Tulane to work so tirelessly for the people of New Orleans. Ryan Rivet produced this video series.