Chemical emergencies can happen at any time at health care
facilities. The impact may not only be to the facility but
patients, staff, and the surrounding community. To assist
hospitals and all health care partners, ASPR/TRACIE has developed
a “Chemical Emergency Considerations for Health Care Facilities”
resource to assist in preparing and responding to chemical
emergencies.
Presenter:
Jason Wilken, PHD, MPH, CDC Career
Epidemiology Field Officer
Danny Kwon, MPH, REHS, California
Department of Public Health
Right of Boom refers to impacts following a radiological/nuclear
explosion which is in the Medical and Health domain. An
improvised nuclear detonation (IND) is the highest impact
terrorism event. It also has the highest potential for saving
lives, hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet medical and health
preparedness activities rarely address radiological emergencies
and the unique attributes of radiological exposure and
contamination. Hospitals and local jurisdictions that plan for
medical surge of contaminated patients will save thousands of
lives without endangering their workforce or disrupting other
operations.
A disaster, whether nature or man-made, can strike anyone
anywhere, including an academic research facility. To ensure
their preparedness and resilience, the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has developed
a report that outlines actions that can be taken to
strengthen academic research facility disaster readiness.
Hospitals must be prepared to respond quickly to Chemical,
Biological and Radiation events in mass casualty situations. The
Yale New Haven Health System Center for Emergency Preparedness
and Healthcare Solutions, in close collaboration with the members
of the Yale New Haven Health System Clinical Advisory Committee
and the Yale New Haven Health System Emergency Preparedness
Committee, has developed Clinical Guidelines to help hospital
workers treat and manage elements of disasters
CHEMM-IST is an interactive decision support tool which can aid
inidentifying which chemical exposure has taken place in a mass
casualty incident.
CHEMM-IST is still under development and should not be used for
patient care. Once thoroughly tested and validated it will be
used for use by basic life support (BLS) and advanced life
support (ALS) providers as well as hospital first receivers.
This tool was developed to be a comprehensive resource for
clinical personnel by providing information on various aspects of
biological, chemical, and radiological terrorism. It is intended
to serve as an emergent guide book on what to do and where to
seek information in the event of an attack.
The Chemical Hazards Emergency Medical Management website offers
a comprehensive, user-friendly, web-based resource that is also
downloadable in advance, so that it would be available during an
event if the internet is not accessible.
This resource was developed to enable first responders, first
receivers, other healthcare providers, and planners to plan for,
respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of
mass-casualty incidents involving chemicals.
This Burn Resource Manual has been created as a tool for use by
the Emergency Departments in all Los Angeles County Hospitals.
The materials were developed and/or selected from the burn
literature by a Burn Task Force. This Burn Task Force was created
by the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency. This
multi-disciplinary group included the Medical Directors and
Administrative Nurses from the three burn centers in Los Angeles
County, one center in Orange County and one center in San
Bernardino county and representatives of the Emergency Medical
Services Agency.