Sunday, June 2, 2019

A Synopsis On NICU Evacuation Propositions

By Gregory Ward


The recent disasters have shown that the care units may have to evacuate their patients from time to time. The patients in the intensive care unit are medically vulnerable and will require specialized expertise and equipment to move them. NICU evacuation is a difficult process, and if not handled by trained personnel, it can result in more disaster. Hence, it becomes essential to have the Neonatal Intensive Care unit staff well-trained. The training should involve how to handle the patients and the right equipment to use. Consider some of the requirements to carry out the evacuation as discussed in the article.

Agreements ought to be made between different parties. For instance, an agreement should be between the hospital with the incident and other healthcare facilities. This ensures that the patients are received in these facilities without compromise. Again, an agreement between the hospital and transport agencies is vital to confirm that proper transport services will be available during this critical time.

Having proper equipment for this procedure is paramount. Hence, hospitals must be well-equipped and train their staff on disaster preparedness. The training will help the faculty to undertake the crucial methods that will facilitate proper and safe removal of the patients from the facility. On the ground, a leader needs to coordinate this process by categorizing the patients and communicate with the receiving facilities about the process.

Governing bodies should be included during this process. Their primary duty will be providing proper timing to undertake this process and give orders on the evacuation. As such, infirmaries must establish appropriate channels of communication. The mechanism must be reliable to make sure that the board of administration is contacted on time and orders are given promptly. This way, there will be no distractions on the ground. The authority is there to give orders on the best time for transporting the NICU patients before the overall population.

When it comes to patients who have respiratory difficulties, there is a need for surge ventilators that can run on low oxygen and have a battery backup. The equipment is necessary to ensure patients with such problems can breathe during transportation and when in the shelter. The ventilators must be convenient and portable to ensure the safety of patients and the staff.

In case there is ample time for the procedure, the most critical patients should be moved first followed by the less critically ill patients. Apart from making it easy for this process, receiving hospitals can provide a location so that the patients can continue receiving the same care. It is easy to cluster these patients based on their medical needs and disease resources.

The preparation of the patient in the intensive care unit must be done before the hospital to hospital transfer. It should include diagnostic procedures, initial stabilization, medical interventions, and damage control techniques to make sure that any change during transportation can be addressed.

The medical details of a patient ought to be available in the receiving end. This is to confirm that the receiving hospitals can continue caring for the received patients. If an electronic record is not available, the hospital must produce a paper record containing the problem list and patient identification. This way, it becomes easy to handle patients.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment