Prehospital and disaster medicine
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Prehosp Disaster Med · Jun 2011
ReviewPrimary health care and disasters-the current state of the literature: what we know, gaps and next steps.
The 2009 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction/Emergency Preparedness (DRR/EP) and the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 demonstrate increased international commitment to DRR/EP in addition to response and recovery. In addition, the World Health Report 2008 has re-focused the world's attention on the renewal of Primary Health Care (PHC) as a set of values/principles for all sectors. Evidence suggests that access to comprehensive PHC improves health outcomes and an integrated PHC approach may improve health in low income countries (LICs). Strong PHC health systems can provide stronger health emergency management, which reinforce each other for healthier communities. ⋯ Primary Health Care is very important for effective health emergency management during response and recovery, but also for risk reduction, including preparedness. There is need to; increase the quality of this research, clarify terminology, encourage paper authorship from LICs, develop and validate PHC- specific disaster indicators and to encourage organizations involved in PHC disaster activities to publish data. Lessons learned from high-income countries need contextual analysis about applicability in low-income countries.
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Prehosp Disaster Med · Jun 2011
Assessment of hospital disaster preparedness for the 2010 FIFA World Cup using an internet-based, long-distance tabletop drill.
The State University of New York at Downstate (SUNY) conducted a web-based long-distance tabletop drill (LDTT) designed to identify vulnerabilities in safety, security, communications, supplies, incident management, and surge capacity for a number of hospitals preceding the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The tabletop drill simulated a stampede and crush-type disaster at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa in anticipation of 2010 FIFA World Cup. The LDTT, entitled "Western Cape-Abilities", was conducted between May and September 2009, and encompassed nine hospitals in the Western Cape of South Africa. The main purpose of this drill was to identify strengths and weaknesses in disaster preparedness among nine state and private hospitals in Cape Town, South Africa. These hospitals were tasked to respond to the ill and injured during the 2010 World Cup. ⋯ This assessment of disaster preparedness indicated an overall good performance in categories such as hospital equipment and development of major incident plans, but improvement is needed in hospital security, public relations, and communications ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
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In recent years, the number of public health emergencies has increased. Improving hospital emergency management is an important challenge. ⋯ After the occurrence of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, Chinese hospital managers took many measures to improve hospital resilience. However, most of these efforts lacked the guidance of theories, concepts, principles, and methods. An integrated, standardized, operational hospital emergency management model has not been established. Although the survey response rate was relatively low, some clues for further study were discovered, and suggestions to the health authority for hospital emergency management improvement were revealed.
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Prehosp Disaster Med · Jun 2011
Cancellation of scheduled procedures as a mechanism to generate hospital bed surge capacity-a pilot study.
The ability to generate hospital beds in response to a mass-casualty incident is an essential component of public health preparedness. Although many acute care hospitals' emergency response plans include some provision for delaying or cancelling elective procedures in the event of an inpatient surge, no standardized method for implementing and quantifying the impact of this strategy exists in the literature. The aim of this study was to develop a methodology to prospectively emergency plan for implementing a strategy of delaying procedures and quantifying the potential impact of this strategy on creating hospital bed capacity. ⋯ For the institution studied, the strategy of delaying scheduled procedures could generate inpatient capacity with maximal impact during weekdays and little impact on weekends. Future research is needed to validate the categorization scheme and increase the ability to predict inpatient surge capacity across various hospital types and sizes.
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Prehosp Disaster Med · Jun 2011
Computer-facilitated assessment of disaster preparedness for remote hospitals in a long-distance, virtual tabletop drill model.
Emergency preparedness experts generally are based at academic or governmental institutions. A mechanism for experts to remotely facilitate a distant hospital's disaster readiness is lacking. ⋯ A web-based data acquisition system using a virtual, tabletop drill to remotely facilitate assessment of disaster preparedness is efficient and feasible. Weekly reinforcement for disaster preparedness resulted in strong compliance.