Citation

Rogers FB, McCune W, Jammula S, Gross BW, Bradburn EH, Riley DK, Manning J. Am. J. Disaster Med. 2017; 12(4): 267-273.

Affiliation

Lancaster General Health/Penn Medicine, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, American Society of Disaster Medicine, Publisher Weston Medical Publishing)

DOI

10.5055/ajdm.2017.0280

PMID

29468629

Abstract

Described herein is the utilization of the hospital's Emergency Operations Plan and incident command structure to mitigate damage caused by the sudden loss of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system within the entire operating room suite. The ability to ameliorate a devastating situation that occurred during working hours at a busy Level II trauma center can be ascribed to the dedication of the leadership and clinical teams working seamlessly together. Their concerted efforts were augmented by adherence to an established protocol that had been thoroughly substantiated and practiced during numerous training simulations. This resulted in successful and timely resolution of an internal crisis that crippled the surgical capabilities of the sole trauma center in the county. After thorough investigation and identification of the issues that contributed to the malfunction, redundancies were built into the system to ensure that a similar incident did not occur again.

Language: en