January 19, 2012

Emergency and Disaster Nursing Reaction Paper on Ferry Disaster Triage System

Disaster is an emergency that warrants extraordinary response from outside. It is a sudden misfortune whereby the facilities of hospital or the community to address the emergency is compromised. Adaptation of the Emergency Team composed of doctors, nurses and ancillary individuals are very important to address the needs of every person affected in the disaster. The emergency team is equipped with knowledge about First Aid to render assistance before definitive treatment is given. To manage a disaster, authorities came up with the triage system hoping that by utilizing this, manpower will be used efficiently, resources will be maximized and priorities will be set. A simple triage or what is also known as start system prioritizes the emergent patients or patients having severe damage categorized in the red classification. Triage has 4 classifications namely: Emergent (red) cases which require major resuscitation or immediate intervention to avoid loss of life or permanent disability, disorder is acute and potentially life threatening. Urgent (yellow) cases that require prompt but not immediate attention, delay of 2 hrs will not compromise life or limb, possible danger if unattended. Non-urgent (green) cases may safely wait more than 2 hrs, disorder is non acute, relatively minor in severity, time is not a critical factor. Black cases involve persons that are already dead, dying and hopeless to be treated. In simple triage there is adequate resources and manpower available. The movie has 100 plus victims, thus it is a mass casualty. They used a simple triage system. During a disaster, there should be a leader or incident commander to manage the emergency team. In the movie, a female consultant instructed her male subordinate to find the missing son of one victim to avoid disappointing the mother after waking up from the O.R table. Another, a male consultant also guided his female intern in performing a neurosurgery in the disaster field to minimize intracranial hemorrhage and pressure. From the beginning to the end, the guidance of the consultants remained. There should always be a form of communication available. In the movie they used phones to communicate. There was also an information officer acted out by an intern. He posted pictures of the dead and critical victims. He also announced the names of the survivors for the sake of family inquiries. There was also another intern who explains the incident thereby relieving the anxiety of family members waiting in the lobby of the hospital. She also holds the hand of one of the family member and if somebody calls her attention for inquiries, she tries to answer them in a therapeutic way. The emergency team should be alert and ready at all times to go to the disaster field. Upon arriving, they should save lives as many as they can. They should not panic which is very ironic as to what of the emergency team member did. She tried to avoid a victim asking for her help and yet ended up helping him. She was even at the edge of withdrawing and losing hope saving the victim; fortunately she relaxed and tried to think another option which is to call her superior. It is very important to trust and be confident on your capabilities. You should do everything in your capacity trying to save a persons life. Do not panic because when you panic, mental block happens and muscle coordination becomes poor. The team prevented further casualties by acting out immediately. They used identification cards and uniforms for them to be recognized as emergency team members. They provided first aid and transported emergent individuals to the hospital for immediate treatment. Yet in the movie, the importance of surveying the scene was not emphasized. How will a caregiver save someone needing help if the caregiver himself needs help due to injury obtained from an unsafe environment? There was a part where in the intern is saving a person at the riverbank. The victim accidentally pushed her and she drowned. The intern cannot blame him of course. If nobody saw them both, they could have died. Never say words that you cant keep. Death is sad and devastating but veracity should always be kept to avoid false hopes unless the person who needs to know the truth is too weak to know or not yet ready as based on the proper assessment of the physician, thus, a delay in telling the truth can be done.