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medpundit |
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Tuesday, May 02, 2006A study released last week found that nearly half of local public-health department staffers would not report to work if there were a pandemic. "When people are worried about their families, they'll put family before work," says Richard Bradley, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, who noted that a number of his staffers were no-shows two days before Hurricane Rita's projected landfall last year. The article also points out, correctly, that most community physicians have no idea what their role would be in an emergency situation. When hospitals have disaster drills and planning, they only incorporate the hospital staff, not the community physicians. There are exceptions, especially in small towns, but by and large the business of hospitals is divorced from the business of physicians these days. posted by Sydney on 5/02/2006 08:31:00 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:
No, we are not ready for any kind of biological catastrophe, manmade or natural. I feel this is mainly because the planners are keeping things too close to the vest. (Because they know just how little we CAN do to get ready??? I wonder.) And it is correct that most community physicians have no idea what we are to do. Because we aren't being told, and we aren't being required to participate. Our "required" participation in the drills that we are being told about is to answer our pages and say whether we could come or not if it were real. I once scheduled time off to actually come when called, and no one knew what to do with me; they had made no preparations for a physician to actually be there! |
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