 A catastrophic event happens and you're on your own. Help is on the way but you don't know when it will arrive. How do you increase patient surge capacity within the hospital? How do you maximize the use of what you have available at that moment? Since 9-11, The nation's preparedness and response agencies have made significant progress in command, control and coordination efforts. Agencies that previously worked independently now share a common focus, language and resource management systems. Education, training and equipment have been provided to EMS professionals and hospital - based personnel (first receivers) to assist with the management of chemical, biological and trauma patients. Great steps have been made to increase communication by means of hardware and increase interagency cooperation. Despite the improvements within the communities there remains a misperception as to when the disaster response is complete. Many community response activites stop at the scene and consider the event "all clear" once patients are transported fron the scene to the hospital. Research by Dr. E. Auf der Heide (1998) refutes the traditional planning assumption that a patient will be properly triaged, stabilized and appropriately distributed to area hospitals. There are many process challenges in the management of patient flow from the disaster scene to the throughput process at the hospital. The challenges are derived from the lack of triage training, lack of common language, independent system processes and management of materials in responding to a catastrophic event.  The START 2 Finish model is a resource management tool for hospitals to optimize usage of three resources existing in a hospital at all times: manpower, space and supplies. Effective management of these resources results in an increase in patient care surge capacity. Studies have proven that in major disasters approximately 54 % of the victims arriving at hospitals have not been triaged. Most hospitals do not train their Emergency Services (ER) personnel in mass casualty triage. The START 2 Finish model teaches and utilizes the nationally recognized pre-hospital triage system START (Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment) and JumpSTART (pediatric population) as an implementation tool for the model. The model continues the color-coding process of the existing red, yellow, green and black colors, which equate to the initial triage category of the patient and assigns those colors to receiving treatment stations within the hospital. It also pre-designates the staffing by those colors which correlate with their credentialing. An additional benefit of designating staff is they are designated by function, not title. For example a business office manager may be an escort in the GREEN STATION. Any person can identify their function, as well as their work station because that person is wearing a S2F vest which is green and is labeled ESCORT. This "Train - the - Trainer" model provides a means of increasing surge capacity at the hospital by using resources already within the hospital at the time of the incident. The packet includes templates for manpower allocation by "pre-credentialing" staff types, receiving station supply cart items, traffic pattern considerations, an instructor and student manual and a training CD. Download START 2 Finish© disaster response model for the community PowerPoint Presentation . If you don't have Adobe Reader you can download a free viewer here . |