ABSTRACT
Hurricane Katrina and the resulting levee failures decimated the New Orleans landscape,
trapping physicians inside hospital facilities for up to 5 days. With over 2000 people trapped in the 3 primary teaching hospitals, there were
only 3 fatalities. Yet despite the lack of adverse events, the experience revealed
that graduate medical education is woefully underprepared to deal with disaster. As
call schedules obviously did not anticipate the disaster, the assignment of physicians
to these shifts was random, without regard to the ability to withstand that stress
and the conditions. The group of physicians that was assigned was a heterogeneous
mix of personalities, experience levels, and psychological fortitude. None of the
physicians had been formally trained in the core principles of disaster management.
This article reviews an innovative approach to disaster management, drawing upon the
expertise of law enforcement, the airline industry, and on-going physician development
programs in disaster medicine.
KEY INDEXING TERMS
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References
- Charity hospital and disaster preparedness.Ann Emerg Med. 2006; 47: 53-56
- Healthcare worker competencies for disaster training.BMC Med Educ. 2006; 6: 10-11
- High-reliability teams and situation awareness: implementing a hospital incident command system.J Nurs Admin. 2006; 36: 67-72
Available at: http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 13,
2008
Received:
May 1,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
