Hospital Planning and Response to Sudden Mass Casualty Incidents

Abstract

This chapter describes the essential topics that a hospital needs to address when planning the response to a sudden mass casualty incident (SMCI). It describes in detail the major components of a hospital plan, how to acutely increase hospital capacity and plan alternate treatment areas, how to quickly activate the plan, and challenges with identification and registration of multiple patients simultaneously, and finally how to handle large numbers of families, friends, and media.