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Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study

Background: Managing mass casualty or disaster incidents is challenging to any person or organisation. Therefore, this paper identifies and describes common challenges to managing such situations, using case and lessons learned reports. It focuses on sudden onset, man-made or technologically caused...

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Autores principales: Hugelius, Karin, Becker, Julia, Adolfsson, Annsofie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32354076
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093068
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author Hugelius, Karin
Becker, Julia
Adolfsson, Annsofie
author_facet Hugelius, Karin
Becker, Julia
Adolfsson, Annsofie
author_sort Hugelius, Karin
collection PubMed
description Background: Managing mass casualty or disaster incidents is challenging to any person or organisation. Therefore, this paper identifies and describes common challenges to managing such situations, using case and lessons learned reports. It focuses on sudden onset, man-made or technologically caused mass casualty or disaster situations. Methods: A management review was conducted based on a structured search in the PubMed and Web of Science databases. Results: The review included 20 case—and lessons learned reports covering natural disasters, man-made events, and accidents across Europe, the United States of Amerika (USA), Asia and the Middle East. Five common challenges were identified: (1) to identify the situation and deal with uncertainty, (2) to balance the mismatch between the contingency plan and the reality, (3) to establish a functional crisis organization, (4) to adapt the medical response to the actual and overall situation and (5) to ensure a resilient response. Conclusions: The challenges when managing mass casualty or disaster events involved were mainly related to the ability to manage uncertainty and surprising situations, using structured processes to respond. The ability to change mind set, organization and procedures, both from an organizational- and individual perspective, was essential. Non-medical factors and internal factors influenced the medical management. In order to respond in an effective, timely and resilient way, all these factors should be taken into consideration.
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spelling pubmed-72465602020-06-10 Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study Hugelius, Karin Becker, Julia Adolfsson, Annsofie Int J Environ Res Public Health Review Background: Managing mass casualty or disaster incidents is challenging to any person or organisation. Therefore, this paper identifies and describes common challenges to managing such situations, using case and lessons learned reports. It focuses on sudden onset, man-made or technologically caused mass casualty or disaster situations. Methods: A management review was conducted based on a structured search in the PubMed and Web of Science databases. Results: The review included 20 case—and lessons learned reports covering natural disasters, man-made events, and accidents across Europe, the United States of Amerika (USA), Asia and the Middle East. Five common challenges were identified: (1) to identify the situation and deal with uncertainty, (2) to balance the mismatch between the contingency plan and the reality, (3) to establish a functional crisis organization, (4) to adapt the medical response to the actual and overall situation and (5) to ensure a resilient response. Conclusions: The challenges when managing mass casualty or disaster events involved were mainly related to the ability to manage uncertainty and surprising situations, using structured processes to respond. The ability to change mind set, organization and procedures, both from an organizational- and individual perspective, was essential. Non-medical factors and internal factors influenced the medical management. In order to respond in an effective, timely and resilient way, all these factors should be taken into consideration. MDPI 2020-04-28 2020-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7246560/ /pubmed/32354076 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093068 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Hugelius, Karin
Becker, Julia
Adolfsson, Annsofie
Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title_full Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title_fullStr Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title_full_unstemmed Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title_short Five Challenges When Managing Mass Casualty or Disaster Situations: A Review Study
title_sort five challenges when managing mass casualty or disaster situations: a review study
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32354076
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093068
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