How safe are our hospitals ?

Red Alert
Emergency alert codes-Old friend’s new name - Codes You Aren’t Meant To Know

ARE WE PREPARED ?
How safe are our hospitals ?

Towards Creating a Culture of Safety  - Improving systems rather than blaming individuals?

----------------------------------------------------------“Fire breaks out at SKIMS hospital-‘Patients evacuated safely’- by timely action taken by visitors, hospital staffers and the Fire and Emergency Services personnel, reports and witnesses said”. GK Cty correspondent .

After reading all these comments, one  can easily  say  -“ A very grave situation was averted in a very timely manner. This was possible because the organization developed and maintained an emergency management plan and program to respond to likely inside and external  disasters.; “Q” How safe are our  other hospitals (govt or private ), to tackle such accidents?

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Staying current: Disaster preparedness for hospitals is not new. Hospitals have always been required to have an emergency plan to follow should a disaster occur,Post-disaster needs assessment  ,”A  better next time ,” philosophy always  leaving  a scope for further improvement. Although hospitals may have general emergency management for external disaster plans in place, they may not have planned for  bigger inner disasters like  fire, explosions, toxic gas releases, hazardous material spills ,Mr.Strong, and  child abduction etc which  pose a threat both to the hospital inmates and caregivers . Many employees of hospitals are not aware of the procedures to follow should an emergency occur. We  are known to wake up with disasters and do  “quick fixes”as happened in “GB pant tragedy . Hospitals are supposed to anticipate such incidents and have written policy beforehand to identify responsibilities of individuals and departments in the event of a disaster situation and follow Standard Operating Guidelines (SOG's) for response. Each hospital or health care institution can then decide how it wishes to manage and inform staff of potential disaster or an emergency situation. Many hospitals use “alert color codes”  (e.g. "Code Red", "Code Blue") to manage and inform staff of potential emergencies/disaster  information quickly and with a minimum of misunderstanding to staff, while preventing stress or panic among visitors to the hospital. "Code Blue " and "Code Red " are both terms that are often used for to refer to a  cardiopulmonary arrest and  fire alarm, but other types of emergencies (for example child abductions, Combative Person with or without  weapon–the nomenclature may  vary from country to country . Some hospitals announce emergencies ("Codes") over a public address system while others just alert the necessary personnel via a pager bleep/system with the location specified. It is sadly true most of our hospitals. don’t have a  modern alert notification system ,or  even  PAS –public addressing system of announcement. And above all  most important basic emergency  alert policy to  announce CPR(Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) alert –Code blue or equivalent--an emergency alert code   announcing occurrence of a  medical emergency in which a team of medical personnel work to revive an individual in respiratory or cardiac arrest  .  CPR is accepted practice for sudden in-hospital and out of hospital death which have now become the basis for modern day basic life support (BLS) CPR. How sad it is to know we don’t have “code blue “ model even in our premier institutions. Our  Doctors  in field deserve appreciation and encouragement for Extending BLS, advanced trauma  life support   (ATLS) training guidelines  to Medicos and paramedics  in the districts and sub districts.With a large number of hospitals in the city some of them yet to comply with  MINIMUM SAFETY STANDARD REQUIREMENTS FOR THE Hospital.Such  hospitals should be asked to follow the patient and staff  safety norms .