John Walsh

John Walsh, chairman of the Department of Surgical Services at Memorial Medical Center, appears at a turning point in the hospital’s evacuation: early on September 1, 2005, as staff faced another day of uncertainty, he pressed fellow doctors to act rather than wait. His departure by boat to organize a rescue effort gave practical form to that insistence, even as the wider plan for moving patients remained uncertain.

Role and setting

By Thursday morning, seventy-two hours after Hurricane Katrina struck, Memorial’s evacuation had become a prolonged emergency. Many patients remained in the building, and the doctors had few grounds to expect that a government-organized rescue would arrive promptly. Walsh was among a small group who gathered in a second-floor radiology suite early that morning. As head of surgical services, he was positioned within the hospital’s medical leadership, but the episode shows him acting directly as a clinician and colleague rather than waiting for a formal plan to resolve the situation.

The meeting began with a report on the night just passed. Walsh described what he had witnessed in the lobby and how difficult it had been for staff who stayed awake caring for patients. Some workers were demoralized; others complained that one physician had behaved obnoxiously and upset them. His account placed the evacuation problem alongside the condition of the people trying to carry it out: the hospital needed to move patients, but its staff were exhausted and their morale had frayed.

Frustration with delay

The doctors were unhappy that Memorial’s leaders had declined an opportunity to continue helicopter evacuations from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Since then, few patients had left, although family members, visitors, and staff had departed. The prospect of a swift government rescue looked poor. Helicopters that Tenet Healthcare might send could not be counted on to make the evacuation quick. The gap between the hospital’s need and the uncertain arrival of outside help sharpened the choice before the doctors: wait for the next scheduled discussion, or try to create movement themselves.

Walsh’s response was to urge what he called “a little bit more of a surgeon’s attitude.” He described surgeons as people of action, and the group chose insubordination over inaction. The account presents this not as a settled institutional policy but as a decision by doctors to begin acting before the scheduled morning meeting about options. Their immediate goal was to replace a message of indefinite waiting with an assurance that patients would get out.

Taking action

After first light, Walsh left Memorial with an anesthesiologist aboard the plant-operations director’s fishing boat. They set out to try to organize a more concerted rescue effort. The choice of boat made the constraints concrete: the doctors were attempting to work through a city flooded around the hospital, with no dependable, rapid rescue plan in hand. Walsh did not simply argue for urgency inside the meeting; he joined an effort outside the hospital to find a way to move people.

A second anesthesiologist went to find Anna Pou and Roy Culotta to ask whether they would reassess the patients who remained. This parallel initiative linked the search for transportation with the question of who still needed evacuation and how the remaining patients should be prioritized. The account does not establish that Walsh directed the reassessment or that his boat journey secured a particular rescue. It shows a small group dividing tasks in response to stalled progress, with Walsh taking on the effort to coordinate help beyond the hospital.

Evidence and significance

Soon after sunrise, Walsh was also present at a gathering on the emergency-room ramp led by incident commander Susan Mulderick, with chief executive L. René Goux and medical chairman Richard Deichmann beside her. Doctors, nursing managers, maintenance workers, and security staff crowded together, and the meeting was difficult to hear. Walsh’s participation places his initiative within a larger staff response, not outside the hospital’s chain of command altogether: he had acted before the scheduled meeting, then returned to a gathering where leaders reviewed the remaining food, water, and people.

The remembered phrase about a surgeon’s attitude is attributed with an important qualification. Paul Primeaux recalled Walsh saying it in a 2007 interview; when the author later checked the wording with Walsh, he could not independently recall the quotation, though he did not dispute it. That uncertainty does not erase the actions consistently described around it: Walsh reported what he had seen, joined other doctors in refusing to let deliberation become the only response, and went out by boat to seek a more organized rescue. His role in the episode is therefore defined less by a claim of control over the evacuation than by an attempt to turn concern into action while patients were still waiting.