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very insightful, please continue posting
How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
31–40 of 116 posts
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#32Interesting that he had to do so much thinking and improvising. I'm an EMT in Belgium, and every hospital here has to have plans for mass casualty events. Ambulance bays are built to be transformed into a triage ward, spare beds are kept close, often there's a dedicated command room, ...
With respect from Canada, I doubt you are seeing many incidents with 200+ gunshot victims in Belgium
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#33Do paramedics/ambulances shard across hospitals? It looks like there’s 3 hospitals within 15 minutes of the Las Vegas strip, I’m curious if there’s any attempt to allocate patients equally so that no single hospital becomes overwhelemed.
Not every hospital is a trauma center, according to the article this hospital only dealt with GSW victims
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#34The author's key takeaway is "flow is king", but what stuck me most was giving people freedom to do their job -- e.g., giving the nurses unrestricted access to the medication, letting the CT tech focus on their job, roaming ER doctors, delegating triage to a nurse, etc. -- the success here came from giving people responsibility and trusting them.
The CT scan reminds me of someone that was trying to optimize welders.
They said they were at their maximum, but welders would move parts and plates and then weld.
Efficiency expert realize that welding was maximized if the welders were welding the entire time.
Other people could bring them the metal parts that needed to be welded.
So the normal process where the CT person wouldn't move the person in and out of the CT scan in between CTS was a classic example of that.
The CT tech and the CT machine needed to be running as much as possible. Other people without the skills he's juggling the patients
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#35The author's key takeaway is "flow is king", but what stuck me most was giving people freedom to do their job -- e.g., giving the nurses unrestricted access to the medication, letting the CT tech focus on their job, roaming ER doctors, delegating triage to a nurse, etc. -- the success here came from giving people responsibility and trusting them.
What struck me was how the author was able to identify choke points and make decisions to deviate from procedure to fix them. In many organizations, adherence to procedure is more important than getting good results. It is interesting to see that at least in this hospital at this time, that wasn't true.
He mentions that the CEO of his hospital was there and accepted his suggestion to reorganize the CT scan flow. That shows a level of trust and flexibility that's not common in large organizations.
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#36> Dr. Greg Neyman, a resident a year ahead of me in residency, had done a study on the use of ventilators in a mass casualty situation. What he came up with was that if you have two people who are roughly the same size and tidal volume, you can just double the tidal volume and stick them on Y tubing on one ventilator.
This technique was later applied during the COVID-19 pandemic, when ventilators were in high demand and short supply.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-risky-hack-could-double...
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#37On HN back in 2017, with 71 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15688900
Thanks. How do you check if something will be a repost?
Edit: Plugged the article URL into the search bar at the bottom of HN and it worked surprisingly well. Im not sure why, but i had no confidence in that actually working.
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#38Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#39Does anyone else think this should be made into a movie?
Massive respect to this ED.
Re: How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
#40On HN back in 2017, with 71 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15688900
Thanks. How do you check if something will be a repost? Edit: Plugged the article URL into the search bar at the bottom of HN and it worked surprisingly well. Im not sure why, but i had no confidence in that actually working.
You can also just click "past" under the post header.