Disasters - Ready or Not...

This small, beautiful country of Nepal has seen more than its fair share of natural disasters. Year after year, monsoon rains bring floods and landslides. And after the devastating earthquakes, the country has been looking to improve their disaster preparedness. Patan Hospital has led the country in developing and implementing a disaster plan. As a result, other hospitals have asked Patan for assistance to develop a similar, site-specific disaster plan.

Over the past month, Patan Emergency Department has worked with another hospital, Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (SIRC), to improve their disaster preparedness. Recently, we ran a disaster drill to evaluate their response and implementation. Can I just say - this was a blast! We bused 50 medical students, make-up artists, videographers, and photographers an hour away to this hospital. Additionally, officials from the Ministry of Health, World Health Organization, and Army attended as participants, observers and evaluators.

SIRC did a great job. It was good learning experience for all of us. With the fresh memories from the recent earthquake, everyone understands all to well the critical nature of this preparation. Overall, this was a sweet day of watching hospitals and organizations work together to build the emergency response system in Nepal.

Make-up artists did a great job making wounds/injuries realistic.

One of the Emergency Medicine Fellows gives instructions to the army for the disaster drill. 

"Patients" being dropped off at the hospital. The hospital did a great job of triaging and managing all of the patients.

The medical students did an awesome job acting as patients injured in a building collapse.