Essay On Mass Casualty Event

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Topic : “Managing mass casualty events is just the application of normal activity on a grander scale for the emergency health services. Or is it?” Introduction Mass casualty event or also known as Mass casualty incident (MCI) is defined as an incident in which the casualty is bigger than the available resources (Wong, 2011). Oakland County Medical Control Authority (2013) define Mass casualty event as any incident, which because of it physical Any incident, which because of it physical size, the number and criticality of victims, size, the number and criticality of victims, or its complexity, is likely to overwhelm or its complexity, is likely to overwhelm those local resources which would typically those local resources which would typically be available. There are many kinds of events which caused mass casualty, such as multiple vehicle collision, building collapses, mass transit accident, HAZMAT (Hazardous material) incident, natural disasters, terrorist attack, and etc. (WHO, 2011). To manage those …show more content…

In mass casualty events, triage is very important concept to increase the number of the survivor, eventhough it bear some ethical issue. Triage is a process of allocating treatment and evacuation priorities to the patients based on the severity of their injuries (Wong, 2011). Regarding the method used, patients are sorted into 4 categories by triage : immediate (red), delayed (green), ambulatory (yellow) and expectant (black) (Aitken & Leggat, 2011). Immediate means the patient is suffering a critical injury so that the need to be treated right away to save their lives. Delayed means the patients are suffering injury but did not expected to die in a couple hours. Ambulatory means the patients still able to walk and are presumed not to be critically injured. Expectant means the patient is already died or the survival are not expected (Wong,