Paper Example on Emergency Medical Services in Mass Casualty Incidents

Introduction

Disaster threats keep increasing day by day. Mass casualty events yield to a massive number of casualties within a short time coverage. Mass Casualty Event can happen both in small and population centers including remote areas. Mass casualty happens in case of natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, catastrophic fires and terrorist attacks. Therefore, even small remote areas need good planning when it comes to mass casualty incidences. In reference to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 67% of the Hospitals in America have plans that they set in place for all the disasters that happen (Adini, 2017). Places like Banks and airports can remain closed during an emergency event, but the public known hospitals remain open in case of such disasters.

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Health systems face several challenges upon preparing for an MCE. These challenges include:

Communication problems - There is poor communication in the health system protocol whereby cell phone communication is minimally depended on mostly during an emergency, and unexpected more calls may hang the network. Medics should collaborate and act immediately to any emergency once it occurs to save lives of casualties. Untrained personnel- Many health facilities suffer from health providers who are not fully trained.This makes it hard for the health facilities to set down planning strategies for mass Casualty events. Medical practitioners should be famous with the common injuries away from their normal practice.

Poor hospital maintenance - Most health systems suffer from maintenance problem whereby some systems like power, water, and communication can fail anytime. When preparing for an MCE, it needs better network coverage to ensure landline coverage is easy. So once the hospital has experienced problems to do with maintenance, it becomes hard to establish services that might be needed during a Mass Casualty Event. Communication failure between health professionals may limit the protocols to be followed when preparing for an MCE.

Insufficient funds - MCE preparedness involves a lot of activities. These activities can be coming up with relief services like rehabilitation centers to help individuals in case of an emergency, building relief camp areas and supplying food and other necessities that might be needed in case an emergency has taken place. Mass casualty affects majority individuals and in health facilities to serve a large number of patients in case of a disaster, it needs to have a large staff that is well educated. Therefore, for a team that is to be prepared for the event, there should be prepared to solve the issue of insufficient funds.

Lack of hospital and field triage - this majorly dwells on challenges like violence on the streets, lack of hospital and field triage and other hospital care coverage, This brings out the issue to do with security in hospitals due to tensions that arise from threats and attacks from outside.

Large distances between population centers which make it difficult to give a quick response to an emergency. Another challenge is the lack of sufficient resources. An example is funds and power, training resources like electronic computers, power coverage that is electricity. Another challenge is poor network coverage in some locations. Many areas have poor phone coverage networks this can make it hard in accessing cellphone landlines. This may influence communication negatively. Thus, lowering the feedback response levels. We also have the hospital coverage problem. That is some areas lack enough health facilities that should or can handle a large number of casualties. This is majorly experienced when you find that the available health care facilities have got insufficient manpower. Another challenge is insufficient funding that limits the areas affected by acquiring manpower, equipment and training resources to cover the sites affected by the emergency.

References

Adini, B., Bodas, M., Nilsson, H., & Peleg, K. (2017). Policies for managing emergency medical services in mass casualty incidents. Injury, 48(9), 1878-1883.

Moore, K. M., Papadomanolakis-Pakis, N., Hansen-Taugher, A., Guan, T. H., Schwartz, B., Stewart, P., & Bochenek, R. (2017, August). Recommendations for action: a community meeting in preparation for a mass-casualty opioid overdose event in Southeastern Ontario. In BMC proceedings (Vol. 11, No. 7, p. 8). BioMed Central.