6. Summary

The prospect of facing a community-wide disaster is daunting even to well-prepared hospitals. No hospital or other organization could be expected to perform effectively during such an event without previous training and practice. Conversely, the amount of relevant training and practice a medical team or facility has had can reflect substantially on its ability to perform well during a crisis.

The potential transfer of a large number of injured or traumatized children requires advance planning. Prior written transfer arrangements with other hospitals should be secured when anticipating mass disaster situations.

Several factors must be considered when preparing to transfer patients to other facilities. The most important is that they are stable for transport. The medical team must also ensure that the airway has been secured (remembering that bag-mask ventilation is preferable whenever possible), that breathing is not compromised by an untreated pneumothorax or hemothorax, and that circulation issues have been addressed and controlled.

Essential interventions after a disaster include systematic sorting of injured people
into different categories (triage), management of trauma by stabilization of the injured individuals, and familiarity with the patterns of the most common lesions.