Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Who to call for information.
providers, pharmacists, and health professional
students.
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Where to go for help.
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Modifying State certification and licensing
requirements to allow out-of-State providers to
practice on a temporary basis.
Clear communication with the public is an essen-
tial part of a health and medical response to a
mass-casualty event. In order to deliver clear and
appropriate messages before, during, and after a
mass-casualty event, it is important to consider a
number of issues:
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Modifying State regulations on a temporary
basis to broaden scope of practice standards
among various trained providers.
•
Reallocating providers from nonemergency
care and nonemergency sites to emergency
response assignments and from unaffected
regions to affected regions (this will involve
identifying skill sets of each practitioner group
[e.g., paramedics, nurse midwives, etc.], so as
to optimize reassignment potential).
•
Providing consistent and regular messaging,
preferably through a single spokesperson with
professional
(medical) credibility,
is highly
desirable.
•
Conveying clinical information requires partic-
ular care to assure that a lay audience can under-
stand it.
•
Creating and training a pool of nonmedical
responders to support health and medical care
operations.
•
Distinguishing between political and profes-
sional messages is essential.
•
Making provisions for communication in
languages other than English may be necessary.
•
Making adequate provisions to protect
providers (and their families) who serve in mass
casualty event situations to ensure their will-
ingness to respond.
Strategies for public communication can be built
from effective models of risk communication in use
today for natural disasters, such as hurricanes and
earthquakes. They should reflect and be tied to our
long history of civil defense and other preparedness
efforts dating as far back as World War II and the
Cold War.
•
Developing systems for the advance registra-
tion and credentialing of clinicians to augment
health care personnel needs during a mass casu-
alty event.
Provider Training and Education
Programs
Adopting altered standards of care, even
temporarily, will have a significant impact on
health care delivery operations and therefore on
the needs of providers for training and education
to serve in those circumstances. Planners should
not assume that individual providers will know
how to deliver appropriate care in a mass-casualty
event, but rather should develop or identify training
programs to ensure a knowledgeable and system-
atic, coordinated response effort.
A wide array of preparedness training has been
designed and is being delivered throughout the
country. Some of the training has been evalu-
ated for effectiveness. In the absence of a national
clearinghouse for training for all providers and
Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Health
Care Providers
One of the key components of an effective health
and medical care response is ensuring adequate
supplies of a broad array of qualified responders
and providers who are available and willing to
serve in a mass-casualty event. This is likely to
involve the following:
•
Recruiting from retired or currently unem-
ployed but qualified volunteer providers within
the community and State.
•
Making use of reserve military medical and
nursing providers and other responders, as
well as an expanded group of providers, such
as veterinarians, dentists and dental auxiliary
