OBJECTIVES To assess current medical staffing levels within the Hospital Referral System in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa, and analyze the surge capacity needs to prepare for the potential of a conventional mass casualty incident during a planned mass gathering. METHODS Query of all available medical databases of both state employees and private medical personn...

On Thursday 8 January 1998, a Czech Hip helicopter with 21 personnel on board crashed shortly after take off from Bos Krupa, northwest Bosnia. Seventeen casualties (including six with severe injuries) were airlifted from the scene for treatment at the British Hospital Squadron in Sipovo before aeromedical evacuation the next day to Prague, or discharge to their unit. This was the largest mass c...

The first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings reminds us of the critical importance of multiagency operational plans for high-threat civilian trauma response. Through the commitment of the many national and local leaders, we are more prepared than we were in 2013. Still, we must remain vigilant and continue to drive forward. The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and ...

BACKGROUND Recent occurrences of disaster events highlight the need for increased attention to improving students' knowledge of disaster readiness. Nursing education continues to struggle with the delivery of consistent, effective, and impactful teaching methods for disaster response. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of using a simulated mass casualty incident (MCI) and Web-based r...

Mass casualty incidents (MCI) are highly dynamic situations in which limited available resources need to be quickly and efficiently allocated. In this paper, we suggest considerable extensions to an allocation method that we presented in earlier work. The extensions address two major challenges: First, the need to balance real-world resource usage and second, the need to adapt to changing situa...