Emergency preparedness and disaster response are really what I've focused on clinically
during my career in emergency medicine.
And I think anyone who reads the newspaper can see why this is so important.
So the earthquake and tsunami with the nuclear meltdown in Japan,
or the earthquake in Haiti or the Boston Marathon bombing,
we got to see firsthand emergency preparedness and how emergency physicians respond to disasters.
I got involved with FEMA Ohio Task Force 1 in 2008.
And they're an urban search and rescue team that's been deployed to
Hurricane Sandy, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina.
And we work on emergency preparedness for the United States, and we're also a state asset.
So some of the things that I learned in disaster preparedness with FEMA
I've brought to Ohio State.
I'm involved with the emergency preparedness committee at Ohio State
and I'm also involved with the Columbus Metropolitan Medical Response System,
which is the regional emergency preparedness committee here.
And I'm involved with COTS, Central Ohio Trauma System.
And we work together to try to make sure that the state is safe and the region is safe from disasters.
So we'll have drills that are citywide drills where we simulate a disaster.
We try to make sure that we have the assets that we need.
We also debrief and talk about disasters.
So you'll remember when the H1N1 flu struck,
we were meeting frequently to make sure that we
had enough masks and flu vaccines and things like that for the region of Columbus.
So we do several different drill, types of drills, when we have emergency preparedness drills.
The last large-scale drill we did was a plane crash with a simulated radiologic release.
So we had to decontaminate patients at the door, monitor them for radiation and then treat them.
And I think my job primarily through Ohio State is to help design the drills
and then make sure we're ready if a disaster ever strikes.
The emergency department, like it is for the house of medicine,
in a disaster would be the front door.
As you can imagine, when the Towers fell in New York in 9/11,
the emergency departments were immediately crowded with patients seeking care.
And the first ones to arrive were the worried well
and then behind them were the injured patients.
And emergency departments had to be ready to accept that influx of patients.
They had to be ready to accept a surge of patients.
One of the things that we also do to prepare for that is we
get a surge of patients the night before the Michigan game when the students jump in the pond.
So we simulate a disaster scenario.
We get a surge of patients that night, we have extra staff,
we have extra things where we work to accept a disaster type scenario.
When we do a disaster drill, we do partner with EMS.
And at the disaster drills that we've had most recently,
really all the area EMS have come to practice, and we all try to work together.
Of course, Columbus Fire is the big one that we work with the most.
One of our faculty group members is the Director of Columbus Fire so we have a good relationship with them.
They also staff the Ohio Stadium, you know, the Ohio State football games.
So we work with them on coordination of care during football Saturdays
where there might be 300,000 people at the stadium.
COTS, or Central Ohio Trauma System, does a great job coordinating the different emergency departments.
They actually have a website where we can look and see which other emergency departments are on divert.
There was a water main break at a recent, at a hospital over the winter when it got very cold.
And that hospital was getting ready to evacuate and COTS was going to coordinate
how they would evacuate their patients to the different hospitals.
So I think COTS really helps keep the medical centers in central Ohio together.
You know, my philosophy with emergency preparedness
is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people,
and I think that's the way most people approach it.
And it's a lot about resources and making sure that you have things that you need at the medical center.