American journal of disaster medicine
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Describe the prevalence of pediatric casualties in disaster drills by community hospitals and determine if there is an association between the use of pediatric casualties in disaster drills and the proximity of a community hospital to a tertiary children's hospital. ⋯ The majority of community hospitals do not incorporate children into their disaster drills, and the closer a community hospital is to a tertiary children's hospital, the less likely it is to include children in its drills. Focused effort and additional resources should be directed toward preparing community hospitals to care for children in the event of a disaster.
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In-hospital triage is the key factor for successful management of an overwhelming number of patients in lack of treatment capacity. The main goal of in-hospital triage is to identify casualties with life-threatening injuries and to allocate immediate medical aid. For the first time, we evaluate the quality of in-hospital triage in the German capital Berlin. ⋯ The accuracy of in-hospital triage is low (61 percent). Predominately, the problem of overtriage (24 percent) due to insufficient triage training in contrast to undertriage (16 percent) occurs. The diagnostic triage adjuncts, ultrasound and re-triage, should be routinely used to lower the rate of undetected life threat in mass casualty incidents. Furthermore, a standardized training program and triage algorithm for in-hospital triage should be established.
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Over the last century, the number of disasters has increased. Many governments and scientific institutions agree that disaster medicine education should be included in the standard medical curriculum. Italian medical students' perceptions of mass casualty incidents and disasters and whether-and if so to what extent-such topics are part of their academic program were investigated. ⋯ Most of the students surveyed had never attended courses on disaster medicine during their medical school program. However, respondents would like to increase their knowledge in this area and would welcome the introduction of specific courses into the standard medical curriculum.
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Syrian revolution that began on March 15, 2011 represents not only a political crisis but also a humanitarian one where many relief attempts for saving civil injured were tried. ⋯ Setting up a field hospital in such an area with unsafe conditions needs good communication with medical and relief organizations in the site of crisis, selection of a location as near as possible to the Turkish border, developing a convenient triaging plan, and training nonmedical volunteers to do simple tasks.
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The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act calls for establishing a competency-based training program to train public health practitioners. To inform such training, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Schools of Public Health managed groups of experts to produce a competency model which could function as a national standard of behaviorally based, observable skills for the public health workforce to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazards. ⋯ Practitioners and academics have adopted the Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competency Model, some of whom have formed workgroups to develop curricula based on the model. Efforts will be needed to develop evaluation materials for training and education programs to refine the model as well as for future training and education initiatives.