Mass Casualty Events

Mass Casualty Events

Introduction

The role of nurses is appreciated more and more since the increasing demand of health care and increasing cost of it calls for effective roles from nurses more than ever. These nurses respond to different situations in a professional manner as to aid the other professional in the health care system.

A general error we all commit is that, disasters cannot happen to us, and therefore, it is not considered important to be prepared for in advance for such emergencies. Every professional needs to be prepared for emergency situations, especially nurses. They need to get their family prepared, acquire education related to formulate response in emergency cases, and plan ahead of time what should be the role of each in such circumstances. Time is the key variable in such situations, therefore, it is stressed that all things should be in place and contingency plans must be worked out in advance to safe precious time in saving the victims.

Discussion

Nurses are part of health care system. They represent a profession catering to the health care needs of many people at a single time and constitute the largest workforce of health care (Tormey, 2010). Although nurses are specialized and trained to cater the patients belonging to a particular category of clinical practice, in emergency like mass casualty, they are called in irrespective of the area of expertise. Nurses are the first receivers in case of disasters. American Nursing Association (ANA) asks every professional to be ready for handling the emergency, on the contrary majority of the nurses have very limited knowledge of acting in case of disasters on large scale.

Multiple casualty events differ from mass casualty events in that multiple casualty events can be treated effectively with the available local resources, while in the case of later the local resources re quickly overwhelmed. Nurses, in order to handle these mass casualty events need to broaden their competency areas. They will have to work on their management skills, and leadership roles. They will have to play the role for treatment, counseling, triage and resource allocation. Nurses need to make themselves knowledgeable about the reaction to these events; in addition they should make efforts to educate the community as well in this regard.

The three lessons that I learned from this article are:

Be prepared in advance for mass casualty disasters

Engage in professional development

Maintain lines of communication during disasters

First Lesson

The first lesson is that, be prepared in advance. The notion that it cannot happen to us is faulty and is not professional attitude. Nurses should be prepared, by first of all learning about these mass casualty disasters. How they differ from multiple casualties disasters, what role is demanded in what situations? These all things should be sort out in advance. However, a nurse will not be able to focus on the disaster, if his or her own family is in danger. In order to curb that, a nurse should prepare the family to respond to such situations. The key is to plan the response in ...