Activating physicians within a hospital emergency plan: a concept whose time has come?
BACKGROUND
Clinicians are an essential component of the medical response to an emergency in which there are actual or suspected injuries. However, little is known about the institutional notification methods for clinicians during emergencies, particularly for off-site staff. Further, there is little knowledge regarding clinicians' level of awareness of the emergency plans at hospitals with which they are affiliated, or of their knowledge regarding the notification protocols involved in plan activation during an emergency. If physicians are unaware of how to respond to an actual or threatened emergency, the effectiveness of any hospital emergency plan is severely limited.


OBJECTIVE
This study sought to examine hospital emergency plans, institutional clinician notification, and recall procedures, as well as clinicians' level of knowledge regarding the emergency notification and recall protocol(s) at the hospital(s) with which they are affiliated.


METHODS
Written surveys were sent to hospital emergency coordinators, chiefs of service, and individual clinicians employed by a large, multihospital healthcare system in a major urban area.


RESULTS
We found that 64 percent of respondents' hospitals had a recall protocol; of those, 53 percent required that the hospital contact clinicians, with 17 percent of those hospitals using a central operator to make the calls. Of the chiefs of services who participated, 56 percent claimed to be very familiar with their facility's emergency plan, and 53 percent knew that it had been activated at least once in the past year.


CONCLUSIONS
Hospital emergency responders are not sufficiently knowledgeable of their institutions' emergency plans. In order to ensure sufficient surge capacity and timely response, a tiered activation system, intimately familiar to potential responders, should be developed, taught, and drilled by hospitals to formalize physician call-up.
Gebbie
Kristine M
KM
Center for Health Policy, Columbia University School of Nursing, New York, New York, USA.
Silber
Steve
S
McCollum
Michael
M
Lazar
Eliot J
EJ
D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004631:Emergency Medical Service Communication Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006761:Hospitals / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population