This Veteran Nurse Seeks a ‘Bridge’ into Emergency Management
Dave DesLauriers
For Dave DesLauriers, like many others in the nursing profession, this is a second — or third — career.
His first two were in the broad realm of social work, helping individuals with issues ranging from housing and employment to domestic violence and substance abuse, in settings that included a homeless shelter and a Planned Parenthood office.
The shift to nursing came about, in part, due to chance and circumstance while he was looking to pursue a master’s degree in social work.
“I’m a person who believes that everything happens for a reason,” he said. “I was really struggling to get things matched up for the path to the master’s in social work, and I eventually decided to go over to Mount St. Mary’s College — I was living in New York at the time — and talk about their nursing program.”
He did just that, and within an hour, one of the sisters at the school had his plan mapped out for him. One of his first professors there, he said, was a “strict, matter-of-fact educator” who reminded him a lot of his mother, who worked as a nurse at Holyoke Hospital (now Holyoke Medical Center) for many years.
“I knew exactly at that moment that I was in the right place,” said DesLauriers, whose third career has been anything but static. Indeed, it has involved several time zones — with stints in New York, Hawaii, and then the Bay State — as well as settings, from Vassar Brothers Medical Center to Mercy Medical Center to the Massachusetts Veterans Home at Holyoke, and responsibilities, from emergency room nurse to his current role as RN coordinator for admissions at the Veterans Home.
And now, with a master’s degree in emergency management from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy (MMA), which he earned online nights and weekends, the door is open to new opportunities in that intriguing field.
Indeed, while the current political climate leaves funding the Federal Emergency Management Agency in limbo, there are certainly opportunities at the state level, said DesLauriers, noting that the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency handles many different types of emergencies, from power outages to weather-related disasters. And he would like to bring a nurse’s perspective to the response to such calamities.
“I would like to bridge my nursing experience on the front lines back into my life,” he told BusinessWest, “and I would love to assist with emergency management and be on the front lines of disaster response, and handle emergency management from the perspective of a nurse.
“We have a lot of current emergency managers — firefighters, police officers, the National Guard, and professionals with a long career in emergency management,” he went on. “But not a lot of nurses, from what I can see.”
And Massachusetts — which is where he would prefer to stay for now — is vulnerable to many types of disasters, DesLauriers said, including flooding, tornadoes (as residents of this region certainly know, having lived through one in 2011), hurricanes, brushfires, a global pandemic, and what he calls infrastructure-related issues.
Elaborating, he said the state’s infrastructure, including bridges, dams, seawalls, and more, is aging and, in many cases, in dangerously poor condition. He knows this because he completed his capstone project for his degree at MMA on such facilities in this region — including the Goodnough Dike and Winsor Dam at the Quabbin Reservoir, the Hadley Falls Dam, the Memorial Bridge, and others — and the consequences in the event of failure.
“They’re aged beyond what would be considered reasonable,” he told BusinessWest. “The bridge that collapsed when the barge struck it [in Maryland] was built in 1970; we have bridges and infrastructure that’s from the early 1900s.
“For the capstone project, I was looking at the catastrophic loss and what could happen if — and it’s not if; it’s more like when — these structures do fail, and what options would exist to manage that,” he went on. “The options that were given include doing nothing, which is not a feasible option, and spending the money to repair them or replace them.
“If you walk the Memorial Bridge today, you can see through parts of it,” he continued, noting that the bridge was essentially reconstructed in the mid-’90s, but has greatly deteriorated since. Meanwhile, the bridges over the Cape Cod Canal, built in the 1930s, are in an equally disturbing, and dangerous, state.
If there is a disaster involving any of these structures, or one of several possible weather calamities, the state must be ready to respond, he said, adding that this response includes treatment of those who might be injured, physically or mentally, with a focus on the long term. He wants to be part of that and bring that perspective he gained from being on the front lines.
“It’s not just a short-term element; it’s a long-term commitment to making sure that the health of the population is committed to,” he said. “And that goes along with the long-term commitment to rebuilding and stabilizing after a disaster.”
It remains to be seen what the next chapter in DeLauriers’ journey will be, but his story clearly shows that nursing can be a second, or third, career, and it can inspire the pursuit of other opportunities as well.
