The hospital emergency management for a large number of earthquake patients in 2008 Sichuan Wenchuan Earthquake, China / 中华急诊医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective A large number of injured earthquake patients were accepted by the hospital whilethe professional surgeons were relatively lack. This article introduced the hospital emergency management in 2008Sichuan Wenchuan Earthquake, China. Method Within 3 days, Central Hospital of Mianyang accepted andtreated over 1000 patients after Wenchuan Earthquake jolted on 12 May 2008,and within 2 weeks, the number ofpatients reached 1500. The hospital carded out emergency management plan (1) emergency comprehensive treat-ment district was established, which was divided into traumatic surgery district, general surgery district, and gen-eral medical district. Traumatic surgery district is responsible for treating traumatic patients, and most doctors andnurses were in this district. The district also had preview, contamination, operation, isolation, monitoring sec-tions, and the tents were numbered and labeled. General surgery district and general medical district were responsi-ble for patients not from earthquake, and only few doctors and nurses were in the two districts. According to the in-jury degree, all the wounded were classified into acute and severe, moderate and minor injuries, and wore red,yellow and blue label on the wrists, respectively. The name, gender, age and diagnosis of each patient and thename of doctor were written on the label. The infectious patients and non-infectious patients were separated.Results Near 200 operations and near 300 operations were performed at one night and at one day, respectively.Within one week, only 1 patient had the lung infection, and one patient with gangrenous emphysema was effective-ly treated. In-hospital cross infection and epidemic of infection disease didn't happen. Conclusions Emergencymanagement model and mechanism, which referred to the model of the battlefield ambulance, played an importantrole in treating a large number of injured patients.