HJNO May/Jun 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAY / JUN 2025 25 While the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, its deepest impacts were felt locally — in every hospital, clinic, and ICU across Louisiana. In Baton Rouge, the leadership at Our Lady of the Lake Health sought to honor those on the front lines and preserve their stories before time dulled their edges. Working with LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, they launched “Under Pressure: A Louisiana Hospital’s COVID-19 Experience,” an oral history project documenting the experiences of healthcare workers at one of the state’s largest hospitals. The project includes 13 interviews with physicians, nurses, and administrators who helped guide Our Lady of the Lake through the height of the crisis. “The stories captured in this collection are a powerful reminder of what it meant to be a healthcare worker during the pandemic,” said Catherine O’Neal, MD, chief academic officer for Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. “We witnessed extraordinary courage, innovation and humanity. Preserving these experiences ensures we never forget those who stood strong when our community needed them most.” The interviews, recorded in summer 2024 and released in April 2025, reveal the real-time pressures of managing an evolving medical emergency: staffing shortages, shifting protocols, emotional strain, and the quiet heroism of care delivered day after day under extraordinary conditions. Even as public discourse grows more divided about what the pandemic was — and wasn’t — “Under Pressure” gives us something simple and essential: the voices of those who showed up. Their memories, told with humility and honesty, serve not just Baton Rouge, but all of us who lived through these years and are still trying to make sense of them. To explore the full oral history collection, visit ololrmc.com/stories-of-strength. The Journal would like to thankOur Lady of theLakeHealth, LSU’sManshipSchool ofMassCommunication, and the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History for entrusting us to help preserve and share this vital piece of Louisiana’s healthcare history. I think the response to disaster is noth- ing new to Louisiana. And for the trainees of Louisiana, we get a unique perspective if you train here on disaster management. Katrina was definitely the first disaster that I worked that I can say was a pivotal moment of learning in my life. And I took notes from Katrina into this pandemic. Nobody’s going to slap my hand in a disaster when we take care of people the right way. And I learned that in the field house at LSU, bringing a ton of evacuees who didn’t know their meds, left with their cat in hand, but needed to be in a field house hospital. You know, how do we take care of all these people and break and bend the rules a little? My 10 years before I was the associate PART ONE Catherine O’Neal, MD, former chief medical officer, Our Lady of the Lake, and current chief academic officer, FMOLHS, shares her memories of that time. Catherine O’Neal, MD Chief Academic Officer, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System Catherine O’Neal, MD, received a Bachelor of Science in animal science from Louisiana State University. She earned a medical degree from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, where she also completed an internal medicine residency. O’Neal completed an adult infectious disease fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases by the American Board of Internal Medicine.