STUDY OBJECTIVE We perform a needs assessment of pediatric readiness, using a novel scoring system in California emergency departments (EDs), and determine the effect of pediatric verification processes on pediatric readiness. METHODS ED nurse managers from all 335 acute care hospital EDs in California were sent a 60-question Web-based assessment. A weighted pediatric readiness score (WPRS), ...

INTRODUCTION In Japan, participants in the disaster-specific medical transportation system have received ongoing training since 2002, incorporating lessons learned from the Great Hanshin Earthquake. The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, and the very first disaster-specific medical transport was performed. This article reviews in detail the central government's control and ...

Since September 11, 2001, awareness of potential terrorist targets has increased greatly. Industrial chemicals, either in storage or transport, are now considered dangerously accessible materials that could be used to cause substantial harm. In response to this new threat, emergency organizations are beginning to plan for such possible chemical releases. Currently there is no tool that allows a...

14 The world’s response to the AIDS pandemic is now at a crossroads. In recent years, the global community—stimulated by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) “3 by 5 Initiative”—has responded with an appropriate sense of urgency that has driven the rapid expansion of treatment services worldwide. Yet, even as life-saving drugs becom...

Emergency department has always been a problem for the health system in most countries (1). In Iran, organizing hospital emergency has been on the agenda since the start of the 10th government cabinet, as poor services and delays in attending to emergency patients had led to patient dissatisfaction and a major cause of complaint from hospital emergency departments(2). Furthermore, considering t...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND During the last decade there has been a need to respond and recover from various types of emergencies including mass casualty events (MCEs), mass toxicological/chemical events (MTEs), and biological events (pandemics and bio-terror agents). Effective emergency preparedness is more likely to be achieved if an all-hazards response plan is adopted. OBJECTIVES To investig...

As residents, we constantly strive to independently manage our patients and develop care plans, while the role of the attending faculty varies between complete supervision and control, to allowing complete autonomy. This concept of attending physicians allowing appropriate autonomy so that residents can develop independence in their practice has been termed entrustment. Patients' and instructor...

dealing with life-threatening situations requires the quickest, most effective response. each time the emergency phone number 115 is dialed, ems is ready to act and dispatch the rescue services needed. whether it is a fire, road accident, crime or medical crisis, the caller in distress should receive support from emergency services and lives should be saved. to be able to meet the required resp...

Plan recognition, cognitive workload estimation and human assistance have been extensively studied in the AI and human factors communities, resulting in many techniques being applied to domains of various levels of realism. These techniques have seldom been integrated and evaluated as complete systems. In this paper, we report on the development of an assistant agent architecture that integrate...

Although general guidelines have been developed for triage of victims in the field and for hospitals to plan for a radiologic event, specific information for clinicians and administrators is not available for guidance in efficient management of radiation victims during their early encounter in the hospital. A consensus document was developed by staff members of four Connecticut hospitals, two i...