ongoing systems and processes, as well as crisis-management
efforts, could benefit from the lessons learned.
In one area, that of physical supplies, supply-chain
personnel and others will look at how supplies were
obtained and distributed.
“We set up two supply areas in the ER; one in Station 1
and the trauma bays, our main resuscitation area, and then
one in Station 2 where we would bring chest tubes, chest
tube trays, crash carts,” Dr. Scherr recalls. “We mobilized
more than a hundred crash carts within 60 minutes.”
On the tech side, hospital officials will be looking at patient-
registration systems, which were lagging behind patient care.
That’s understandable given the historically high volume the
ER was seeing, but there are still IT lessons to be gleaned,
Dr. Scherr says.
“Radiology is also electronic so we utilized a radiologist
who followed an X-ray tech around the emergency
department and wrote the results on the patient with a
Sharpie, or on the patient’s bed, so we didn’t have to wait
for them to electronically cross over into the system. ER
docs are taught to think outside the box. Whenever we
identified deficiencies in our system, any choke point, we
came up with workarounds.”
The hospital CEO and administrative team had set up the
hospital’s auditorium as a waiting room for family and friends.
Having them all in one place, so they could support each
other, also made it easier to relay news and updates. At the
same time, the hospital’s marketing director also fielded the
hundreds of media inquiries that were coming in, as well as
dealing with onsite reporters and camera crews, to ensure
patient privacy and no interruption to care.
The Sunrise administration has also taken great care to
ensure that the staff can recover alongside the patients.
Crisis counselors were onsite within 24 hours of the event,
Dr. Scherr says, and his team had a mandatory debrief for
every physician, nurse practitioner, and scribe.
“I think everybody is doing well,” he says. “I really give it
up to a community that has really come together for first
responders and healthcare workers as well as our families.
The show of support from our community, from local
restaurants and businesses to bring in food and water, to
hosting events such as benefit concerts, has really helped
heal those of us who were there that night.”
That support has helped him personally, he says, to recover
from being onsite for 21 straight hours that night, during
which time he had to not just help colleagues and treat
patients, but also talk to grieving families and friends.
“Being the medical director, there are certain responsibilities
that I had and needed to do,” he says. “One of them was to
help identify the patients that died that evening. I felt that
each family member of those patients needed to have a
physician to talk with them and explain injuries, if they had
any questions. It was difficult because many didn’t have any
identification. They didn’t have their wallets, their purses or
anything like that. We had to identify them on what kind of
clothes they were wearing, or something like a tattoo. We
were able to gather that information with the help of the
social service team here.”
Eventually the last ambulance arrived, and the hospital
turned its attention to the last victims and their care. Then
it was time to restock supplies and medications for the next
day, so that Sunrise could care for the community it serves as
it would do any other Monday. And now, Dr. Scherr says,
it’s time to take some very hard lessons learned and share
them with his healthcare colleagues around the country.
“The murder rate in this country has gone down year over
year, but the number of MCIs has increased, whether it’s a
man shooting concert patrons or a truck in New York City.
I think that these types of things increase your level of
awareness, and there’s lots of things that we’ve learned that
night to better prepare for the next mass casualty event, and
also to help our colleagues throughout the country and the
world to help prepare for incidents such as this,” he says.
“We’re working with local agencies and other hospitals to try
to share the lessons learned, and figure out where the choke
points were during such an influx, the types of things can be
shared throughout the United States and then also
throughout the world.”
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