Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
or region, including all aspects of medical
preparedness and response.
Step 8: Develop and support a research
agenda specific to health and medical
care standards for mass casualty events.
Ideas for research related to health and medical
care standards for mass-casualty events are listed
below. The focus of these suggested studies should
be on practical application, testing, and sharing of
promising practices.
•
Knowledge and skill to provide leadership for
training.
•
Knowledge of and the ability to match hospital
and system-specific resources to interventions
in a crisis.
•
Knowledge of surge plans, resources, and tech-
niques for that particular region/city.
•
Knowledge and skill in developing resource-
sharing agreements, such as regional travel
teams and memoranda of understanding, with
adjacent areas.
•
Examine how different combinations of
resources, signs/symptoms, and response to
treatment may affect the numbers of lives that
can be saved. A better understanding of surviv-
ability is especially important in developing
criteria for the allocation of scarce treatment
resources.
Step 7: Continue and expand efforts to
train providers and others to respond
effectively in a mass casualty event.
A wide range of provider training is needed to
ensure an effective health and medical response to
a mass-casualty event. Training needs include, but
are not limited to:
•
Analyze or develop models to predict how
much injury or illness can be prevented under
different kinds of mass casualty scenarios. A
better understanding of achievable reductions
in injury and illness is important to setting goals
for a system under stress.
•
Examine international models and other real-
world experiences of health and medical care
delivery for evidence of what happens when
“usual” rules are suspended or impossible to
maintain. Other models and experiences may
include specific disaster experiences (e.g., the
Madrid train bombing and suicide bombings
in Israel), as well as countries whose health
systems operate daily with mildly, moderately,
or severely constrained resources compared
with the U.S. health care system. The focus
of the research might be on methods for and
outcomes of rationing scarce resources under
different conditions.
•
General disaster response, including an intro-
duction to altered standards of care and how
the move to such standards may affect triage
and treatment decisions as well as facility
conditions.
•
Legal and ethical basis for allocating scarce
resources in a mass-casualty event.
•
Orientation to how an incident management
system would work in a mass-casualty event.
•
How to treat children and other groups who may
need special equipment or modified approaches
to care.
•
How to recognize the signs and symptoms of
specific hazards.
•
Evaluate all aspects of demonstrations and
mock mass-casualty events, such as “TOPOFF
3” and other drills, to find and address weak
points in the system.
•
How to treat specific conditions.
•
How to recognize and manage of the effects of
stress on themselves and their patients.
•
Conduct research on effective risk communica-
tion with the public.
General principles to guide the design of effective
training programs are included in Chapter 4.
•
Identify ways to share promising and tested
practices in resource sharing (e.g., mutual aid
