Katrina's lessons will bolster emergency medicine: emergency personnel must plan for catastrophic events, not just for relatively small disasters.(Practice Trends)

Publication: Internal Medicine News

Publication Date: 15-OCT-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 International Medical News Group

From safety concerns to the problem of well-meaning but excess emergency personnel, lessons are emerging in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath that should reshape how emergency medicine and disaster management systems respond to future catastrophes.

Planners have focused on contingencies if parts of cities or some streets and services were disrupted by a disaster for a number of blocks--but not when all services, health facilities, and communications were obliterated in an area the size of Great Britain--as occurred with Katrina--said ACEP Public Health Committee Chair Jon Mark Hirshon, M.D.

"One of the things I think people need to realize is that we've been planning for disasters for years, but [Katrina] is by definition a catastrophe," Dr. Hirshon said.

Although emergency medicine leaders said the profession responded admirably to the Katrina crisis, the overall chaotic nature of Gulf Coast rescue operations leaves many areas for...

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