experience to improve the efficiency of medical treatment of disaster victims. Results: The operations of the level-2 surgical teams in Afghanistan have greatly advanced knowledge of dealing with trauma victims with limited personnel and restricted transport resources. The challenges involved in treating local patients always include limited options of long-term observation, and treatment which necessitates modification of treatment methods. Based on the experience of the Urban SAR groups acquired during post-earthquake rescue efforts, there is significant need for more extensive medical aid, specifically in cases of dealing with damage to the extremities, wound treatment and the "crash syndrome". Experience of and procedures followed by the level-2 surgical teams in the course of damage control surgery and damage control orthopaedics, may be directly applicable to treating disaster victims, and also if there is no continued observation of victims. Conclusion: Damage control surgery procedures may be applied to treatment of disaster victims. However, methods and standards of treatment must be carefully tailored to the inability to provide long-term care and patients relying on local healthcare services for continued treatment. That is specifically important in case of orthopedic trauma treatment procedures.
Conclusion:The daily team leader report was considered critical to understanding how each team member was responding to the environment during the TC Winston response. It prompted strategies to manage heat and hydration prior to the manifestation of serious symptoms. Such information also contributed to our knowledge of the AusMAT member workloads, assisting to prepare teams for future deployments. Background: The FMMW displaced over 80,000 citizens and destroyed over 1,600 structures, making it the most economically devastating natural disaster in Canadian history, with a cost of over 9 billion CDN (6,834 billion US). CAN-TF2, an all-hazards disaster response team, was deployed to this disaster. Since its inception in 2002, the team has deployed in Alberta during the Slave Lake wildfires (2011), and the Calgary/High River floods (2013). The medical unit of CAN-FT2 engaged in its first active deployment during the FMMW. This team was designed to provide medical care for CAN-FT2 members and was comprised of paramedics, nurses, and physicians. During this event the teams scope was expanded, as it developed the only medical facility in the FMM vicinity. Methods: A narrative review of the FMMW deployment that focused on lessons learned from the medical team standpoint, along with descriptive epidemiology of the patient encounters. Results: Themes discussed included: (1) the development of a field hospital to support those beyond the CAN-FT2 team, which encompassed first-responders and critical infrastructure employees; (2) undertaking chronic disease management; (3) the fostering of relationships with other provincial agencies that allowed access to medical transport and critical medical supplies; (4) the integration of a critical incident stress-management team that addressed the mental health needs of first-responders; (5) the monitoring of public health markers and advocacy for actions within the incident command structure, that ensured the safety of the first-responders and self-deployed volunteers; (6) the transition from a CAN-TF2 field hospital back to a government facility run by the local medical community in FMM. Conclusion: The medical team capacity within CAN-FT2 continues to evolve, and the FMMW deployment has highlighted a number of strengths and areas requiring further development. , yet commensurate standards are not available for fitness. Furthermore, the physiological impost of responding to disasters in hot and humid conditions are poorly characterized, limiting the development of evidence based standards. Methods: A literature review of emergency responder fitness standards was conducted. Assessment of disaster responders was undertaken according to Brearley et al. (2013) 2 during construction of an EMT2 facility in hot and humid conditions to determine physiological and perceptual responses. Results: Fitness standards are common among law enforcement and civilian protection agencies, generally incorporating running to volitional exhaustion. There were no reports of fitness standards for medical ...
Background: Understaffing in mass casualty incidents limits flow in the overwhelmed emergency department, which is further compounded by inefficient use of those same human resources. Process mapping analysis of a “Code Orange” exercise at a tertiary academic hospital exposed the failures of telephone-based emergency physician fan-out protocols to address these issues. As such, a quality improvement and patient safety initiative was undertaken to design, implement, and evaluate a new mass casualty incident fan-out mechanism. Aim Statement: By February 2019, emergency physician fan-out will be accomplished within 1 hour of Code Orange declaration, with a response rate greater than 20%. Measures & Design: Process mapping of a Code Orange simulation highlighted telephone fan-out to be ineffective in mobilizing emergency physicians to provide care in mass casualty incidents: available staff were pulled from their usual duties to help unit clerks unsuccessfully reach off-duty physicians by telephone for hours. Stakeholders subsequently identified automation and computerization as a compelling change idea. A de-novo automated bidirectional text-messaging system was thus developed. Early trials were analyzed for process measures including fan-out speed, unit clerk involvement, and physician response rate, with further large-scale tests planned for early 2019. Evaluation/Results: Only 50% of telephone fan-out was completed after a 2-hour exercise despite 3 staff supplementing the 2 on-shift unit clerks, with a 4% physician response rate. In contrast, data from initial trials of the automated system suggest that full fan-out can be performed within 1 hour of Code Orange declaration and require only 1 unit clerk, with text-messages projected to yield higher physician response rates than telephone calls. Early findings have thus far affirmed stakeholder sentiments that automating fan-out can improve speed, unit clerk efficiency, and physician response rate. Discussion/Impact: Automated text-message systems can expedite fan-out protocol in mass casualty incidents, relieve allied health staff strain, and more reliably recruit emergency physicians. Large-scale trials of the novel system are therefore planned for early 2019, with future expansion of the protocol to other medical personnel under consideration. Thus, automated text-message systems can be implemented in urban centres to improve fan-out efficiency and aid overall emergency department flow in mass casualty incidents.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.