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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Disaster Medicine: A History


Destroyed in 1937, after a gas explosion in a high school in New London, Texas, at the end of the school, ran into nearby oil workers from the fields to find a pile of smoldering debris. Under the rubble, they could hear the screams of young people and teachers.

In the hours after what was then the second worst disaster in Texas history, the actual death count has never been determined, but some 300 people died, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented a request to> Medical help over the radio, and by that evening, doctors and nurses were on the city, from as far away as Shreveport, Louisiana. Hundreds of vials of anti-tetanus serum were driven to the scene of the explosion. Help was certainly needed. The oil workers moved more than 200 victims, marking down passing cars, the injured and dying taken to the nearest hospital. The Associated Press reported: "The hospitals were overcrowded."

From earthquakes, wars, floods andHurricanes, the history of disaster medicine is full of success and failure when it comes to the results of the doctors, nurses and administrators, the medical assistance during and following a crisis. And it's a long story. "Really, if the location where you started looking for disaster medicine, it's back to the Civil War battlefields, and even prior to Roman times," said Gary M. Klein, MD, MPH, MBA, the practices of acute care medicine in Atlanta. As a general rule,It is never a lack of willingness of the medical profession as a tragedy unfolds to help herself, but has sometimes been lacking for an efficient implementation, especially in some high-profile disasters in recent years.

Disasters are inherently chaotic, and the medical community has too often get caught in the turmoil. But history repeats itself, and in this case, the repetition is welcome, as in earlier eras, doctors examined if their techniquesResponse to disasters and treatment of victims, the latest generation of healers is to adapt to new, varied and terrible threats.

But the real concept of disaster medicine only began appearing in the newspapers with some regularity in the 1950s when the medical associations would accept the idea of anticipating a disaster. They were often trying to determine hosting seminars on how doctors could be in a post-nuclear attack rate. Colonel and physician Karl H. Houghton spoke with aConvention of military surgeons in 1955, they say, "You will not have enough to deal drugs and surgical materials to all victims and need to rapidly and without hesitation, the decision might obtain this life-saving material. This is not always easy. Save the bank or the truck driver? "Do you go along the line of casualties among them, as they come, or go out to those people who may be the most valuable in terms of duration of rehabilitation? come "

Another colonel and a doctor, Joseph R. Schaeffer, MD, can imagine that in a massive nuclear attack, the medical community could be overloaded. "We take 200,000 doctors who care for 176,000,000 people in this country," he said told a medical personnel in a hospital in Texas 1959th "Therefore, people need to learn how to survive for themselves in emergencies." Although educate Schaeffer's call for civilians themselves, went largely unheeded, hisLife work has been a good example of the kind of disaster medicine planning taking place in the 1960s.

If 1995 Oklahoma City suffered the domestic terrorist bombing in a row, 168 dead and 914 injured, Dr. Schaeffer would have been satisfied by the emergency. This was a country that had finally provided that there is a need for disaster preparedness and created the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board (ISIR) in 1981. The ISIR later developed the National DisasterMedical System, disaster medical assistance teams throughout the country.

Disaster medicine as a specialty and way of thinking was not only a reaction to 11 September 2001, but also many other events like the anthrax crisis and Hurricane Katrina. The disaster of the last few years, climate had a profound effect on many doctors, including Paul K. Carlton, MD, director of the Homeland Security at Texas A & M Health Science Center. He believesDisaster medicine should be a board certified medical specialty as well as other specialties including Family Practice and General Surgery. Carlton has some personal experience that led him to this viewpoint.

Since the Surgeon General of the Air Force in 2001, he had been practicing disaster training with medical students three months before an airplane hit the Pentagon. His group was scary enough, creates a similar disaster scenario for the practice, but they are presentedan aircraft with a failed take off or landing and crashes into the Pentagon. Have in their exercises, they are very bad, Carlton admits. But because of the drills, 11 September, when Dr. Carlton crashed into the Pentagon as a First Responder, he and his team were understandably pleased by their performance. He led a rescue group move to a part of the building in which the suspension was concerned, they managed to three people to safety, "and we all have survived." NoSmall matter, since Dr. Carlton himself caught on fire. The fact that he lives at least partly due to the fire-resistant vest he was wearing.

Have also appeared in recent years, such disasters are on the rise, have been prepared and careers have been defined to implement the Government's plans into action, and first responders such as police and fire departments began crafting plans to address how best to disaster . Certainly, the medical device is formed in North America began to study andDiscussion groups in disaster medicine. In some cases, medical schools have been at the front of this movement, they like the University of New Mexico Center for Disaster Medicine, which was founded in 1989. In the meantime, elsewhere in the world, it was disaster for medicine-credit courses at universities in London, Paris, Brussels and Bordeaux, at least since the early 1980s.

Within two years after the terrorist attacks, the University of SouthFlorida College of Nursing began with a disaster and bioterrorism training with eight one-day classes and an intensive two-day program. In determining whether it is a worthy sacrifice, USF has to ask a survey of 179 health professionals, whether they believed the necessary skills and equipment to treat a biological attack linked to terrorism. Forty-seven percent responded that they were ill equipped to deal with a biological attack; forty-five percent gave the same answerfor a chemical attack.

Much of what needs to learn is an attitude, says Dr. Carlton, who attacked an example of a suicide bomber, which cites a cafeteria at a U.S. military base in Mosul, Iraq. "The kids there were a small team, where she was nine operations in the operating room and 10 in the corridor is. That the type of plan B mode, which stands us in good stead when we need them. Our physicians must recognize that We will not always technologythey have become accustomed. I think the Hurricane Katrina, where a woman was in labor, and all the lights went out. The doctors performed a C-section by flashlight. It is not an ideal situation, but they have a beautiful work. "

Education, discussed Carlton is part of a great movement. New York's Columbia University, for example, has two classes, which, as its Web site says, "brings the events of 11 September in the classroom." The first course is PublicHealth Consequences of Forced Migration, and the second Emerging Infectious Diseases - man-made biological warfare to prevent a natural event. In Pennsylvania, developed Albert Einstein Medical Center, "A Primer on Bioterrorism for physicians, medical students, provide an overview of anthrax, smallpox, botulism and plague, including how to detect the symptoms of patients, and limiting the spread of disease, while the management and treatment have. VanderbiltUniversity Medical Center in Tennessee is now offering a course "Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness and Treatment called for doctors, nurses and staff. The UCLA Medical Center, organized a task force on bioterrorism preparedness. The list is endless.

In 2003, partners of the American Medical Association (AMA) with four medical centers and three national health organizations, the establishment of the National Disaster Life Support (NDLS)Training program. The AMA also formed a Center for Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response (CPHPDR). Formed about this time, the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), the AOA / AACOM Task Force on bioterrorism. The AOA later opened an Office of Emergency Response.

Now, more than five years after 11 September 2001, disaster medicine is a field that is growing exponentially. In the middle of all theto change it, what once seemed unlikely now seems inevitable: the creation of a medical board of the recognition in the disaster medicine. It is an idea championed by the American Board of Physician Specialties. Nods his approval is certified in Dr. Andrews, a specialist in internal, preventive and occupational medicine. "Most of us have many patients in one day, but we do not care about a catastrophe, say, once a week. You always come up again and are trained in disaster medicine, andrefreshed, I think it's a nice idea. "

And necessary, "said Matthew F. Milhelic, MD, assistant professor at the Center for Homeland Security Studies at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine is. "I think the way that the Board has proposed this idea, making it an inclusive board are two things raise the level of competence among physicians do to deal with problems in a disaster, and it will also raise awareness in medicineof the need to prepare ... and I think this board is in view of disaster medicine much more than just a brief medical response over a short period and that all medical providers, all medical disciplines, specialties, subspecialties, and so on, will play a role in a major disaster scale have. "

"The majority of physicians in primary care, family practice, internal medicine, and of course, there are pediatricians and ob-gyn," shares Captain JamesW. Terbush, MD, MPH, of the U.S. Navy Medical Corps and NORAD-USNORTHCOM Command Surgeon at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, who was the thick of things after the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "It would be extremely helpful if family doctors were experts in disaster medicine." That is the goal of the Americans, the ABPS 'Board of Disaster Medicine clearly an idea whose time is now.

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