Abstract

During a multiple-casualty incident, a large casualty caseload adversely affects the quality of trauma care given to individual patients. From a trauma care perspective, the goal of the hospital emergency plan is to provide severely injured patients with a level of care that approximates the care given to similar patients under normal conditions. Therefore, the realistic admitting capacity of the hospital is determined primarily by the number of trauma teams that the hospital can recruit. Effective triage of these casualties is often not straightforward, with high overtriage rates. Simplified triage algorithms may be a practical alternative to more elaborate schemes. The concept of minimal acceptable care is the key to a staged management approach during a mass-casualty incident. Discrete-event computer simulation and war game tabletop exercises for key personnel are 2 new modalities that are supplementing the traditional mock disaster drill as effective planning and training tools.

Links

Publisher Full Text

Authors

Hirshberg A, Holcomb JB, Mattox KL

Institution

Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Source

Annals of emergency medicine 37:6 2001 Jun pg 647-52

MeSH

Algorithms
Computer Simulation
Decision Trees
Disaster Planning
Emergency Service, Hospital
Games, Experimental
Health Care Rationing
Hospital Bed Capacity
Humans
Inservice Training
Leadership
Multiple Trauma
Physician's Role
Quality of Health Care
Traumatology
Triage
Workload

Pub Type(s)

Journal Article
Review

Language

eng

PubMed ID

11385336