Clinical Administrator II
In 2005, Patricia Kirsch was working as a Program Coordinator for Student Education when Hurricane Katrina struck. Three memories stand out most vividly in her mind: “First is going to Houston to work at Baylor with the GME Department. Second is coming back into the building, on the 8th floor, in the dark to retrieve files. Third is in January, working out of Poydras—all of Surgery in one area on conference room tables.”
Her relocation to Houston came after Tulane’s GME leadership, Dr. Ronald Amedee, reached out and asked her to work alongside Baylor’s GME Department. “We Tulanians stayed at the Extended Stay by the Galleria, carpooled to work, went out to dinner together,” Patricia recalled. Despite her own home being flooded, she credits the work with keeping her grounded: “I think being able to work allowed me to stay sane. It was not a bad time for me.”
The months following Katrina were a whirlwind of responsibilities and long commutes. During the day, Patricia worked for a different department, then completed her Student Education tasks in the evenings. “Every other weekend, I drove from Houston to Thibodaux (to pick up my daughter), then to NOLA to check on my home while it was being rebuilt, all decisions being made remotely. Sunday, I left NOLA, dropped my daughter off in Thibodaux, and drove back to Houston for another two weeks,” she recalled. Yet, she remembers that time as one of purpose and camaraderie: “Faculty and staff came together as one… bonding and laughing a lot in the evening.”
Acts of kindness from that period still resonate with her. “Twenty years ago, if you lost it—a stranger hugged you. No one lost patience with each other,” she said. Her mother opened her home to 13 people at any given time, and a colleague’s husband even began rebuilding Patricia’s flooded home before her insurance claim was settled.
For Patricia, the Katrina experience reinforced the importance of empathy and compassion. “We do not need a traumatic event to motivate kindness,” she reflected. “Proactively cultivating empathy and compassion builds a more understanding and supportive society.”
Looking back, she feels grateful for the resilience of both the city and the Tulane community: “New Orleanians are in general a resilient people, and there is a sense of belonging fostered at Tulane. I am grateful and blessed to have been a part of this environment for 32 years.”
