Is the osteopathic medical profession prepared for a radiologic or nuclear incident?

The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association March 2014 | Vol 114 | No. 3 The universe of disaster scenarios includes natural (eg, tornados, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes) and human-made disasters (eg, war, civil unrest, terrorism). A mass casualty incident (MCI) is any event that generates more patients at 1 time than locally available resources can manage using routine procedures.1 Communities and physicians rarely have the chance to care for patients during MCIs, although such incidents as the World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York City (2001) and hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans (2005) are exceptions. However, most communities and physicians have little experience with MCIs that would result from the detonation of an improvised nuclear device (IND). A nuclear detonation in a US city, whether by means of a nuclear weapon or an IND, is a catastrophe that would cause enormous loss of life and property and severely damage economic viability on a national, and potentially international, level.2 The blast would trigger a sudden, overwhelming surge on the health care system, after which health care practitioners (eg, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) would have to care for hundreds of thousands of casualties whose injuries might include trauma, burns, radiation exposure and contamination, and combined injuries (eg, ionizing radiation exposure with trauma or thermal burns). Three major issues must be addressed to enable an optimal response and recovery from radiologic/ nuclear (R/N) incidents, as follows3: