First, along with the rest of the nation and the entire
public safety and health care community, my thoughts and prayers are with the
survivors and victims of the shooting in Aurora. I also send support and praise to all of the
PD, EMS, Fire, and Hospital personnel that were affected and will continue to
be affected.
Posting on my original planned topic (SCOTUS Health Care
Ruling) would be disrespectful. Instead I provide this short post on two topics;
one a health care disaster response to something like this and two why we start
to analyze the next day.
Health Care Response
I saw a post on Twitter the other day that said hospitals throughout
the United States have disaster plans. For those of you not familiar, hospitals are obligated
by regulators to have disaster plans.
They are required to test their plans twice a year. Watching the information coming from Aurora
you can see that they have been preparing for worse case scenarios. When hospital staff members were interviewed
they all said something similar to ‘We were notified of multiple patients and
we activated our disaster plan.’ These
plans are what allowed those hospitals to respond capably to this
disaster. The regulatory standards
around EM have supported organizations that have to be very cost conscious to
focus on disaster preparedness. Friday
morning, that level of focus paid dividends as Incident Command was initiated
and staff were called in to augment the response. Dr. Sasson at UCH actually said they were
able to open virtually every OR needed, a true testament to planning and
preparedness.
Now, as the focus rightly shifts to the victims, there are
additional survivors that weren’t in the theater when the shooting occurred. All of the public safety workers involved and
hospital staff are indirect survivors are strongly affected. In the first day of a hospital stay victims
of a multiple shooting at a trauma center can interact with 100+ staff
members. Those indiviuals are impacted
by their experience and suffer an extension of the trauma and their exposure
will not end when the crime scene tape comes down or the news cycle fades. It is up to their employer to ensure that
they have the plans in place for a delayed recovery. Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)
must be a core part of it so that they support the indirect survivor.
The Need for Immediate
Analysis
When something like this happens there is always someone
that becomes a Monday morning quarterback.
That is not what I am advocating.
To use another analogy I encourage individuals to strike while the iron
is hot. As any seasoned Emergency
Manager will tell you, you get more buy-in to an initiative such as Active
Shooter response planning or the need for a disaster drill when there is desire
for change generated from an event such as the Aurora Theater Shooting. The ultimate goal is to protect and/or save
lives in the future.
If you agree or disagree, please comment and let me know below.
I will blog more in the coming weeks on the concept of indirect survivors and CISM in the hospital setting.
