St. Pete doctors help Haiti earthquake victims

St. Petersburg, Florida - Organized chaos. That's what a group of St. Petersburg doctors and nurses found last week when they arrived in Haiti.

Dr. Chris Morrison assembled the local medical team for the trip. They worked out of the Project Medishare tent set up at the Port-au-Prince airport. "It was run and gun throughout the entire day," says Morrison.

The tent was jammed with patients and had limited supplies, yet in this make-shift hospital doctors say medicine thrived and lives were saved. "You had the good the bad and the ugly," says Dr. Scott Plantz, an emergency medicine specialist. "There was a tremendous amount of camaraderie between all the health professionals...all working together to get the job done."

Before the group left last week, 10 Connects reported on some of the supplies they were taking with them. The group Help Brings Hope to Haiti helped transport everything and some infant incubators donated by Bayfront Medical Center made an immediate difference.

"Right when we got down there, they were able to place four babies in those...and they perked right up and they did great," says Morrison.

Morrison was able to take a quick tour of Port-au-Prince. Home video shows people living on the streets of the crumbled city. "It was very emotional, very emotional," Morrison says of the experience.

The doctors and nurses worked long hours under rough conditions, but despite that - or maybe because of it -  they say they returned reinvigorated.

Morrison says, "What I came away with is that we really got back to the roots of medicine and what being a doctor is all about."