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Disaster preparedness: Safe evacuation of non-ambulatory patients

Published in Hospital News
August 2008

By Clifford Adkins

The levee has beenbreached, and evacuation of the city has already begun. The water will soon reach the first floors of local buildings, and you have five floors of patients to evacuate. Time is of the essence.

This was the situation faced by health-care facilities in New Orleans. If an emergency of that magnitude happened in your area would your facility be ready?

As more and more healthcare facilities evaluate their disaster preparedness procedures, there is a growing demand for a cost-effective way to transport patients out of danger quickly, safely and easily. A good disaster preparedness plan not only offers for a quick evacuation, but a safe one. A patient's safety during evacuation is no different than
if they were in the hospital. Recent research has shown that many facilities are ill equipped to handle certain aspects of emergency evacuation.

When New Orleans was hit with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, area hospitals were forced to immediately evacuate thousands of patients from their buildings. Unfortunately,many lives perished as a result of that disaster, and according to a report from the Louisiana Department of Health, the majority of those found dead after the storm lay near hospitals
and nursing homes.

Floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters all represent distinct situations when health-care facilities may need to evacuate non-ambulatory
patients. If an emergency or natural disaster should arise, hospitals and nursing homes must be confident that their current disaster preparedness procedures offer safe evacuation of patients. Each second that passes could potentially be the difference between life and death. During Hurricane Katrina, one New Orleans area hospital used 12 staff members and nearly two hours to carry a single obese patient down its emergency stairwell. As a result, much of the staff was not able to assist with other aspects of the evacuation. By comparison, a similar evacuation could be completed in mere minutes with a new sled developed by ARC Products. The unique device called the Med Sled safely evacuates patients in a fraction of the time of other methods. The Med Sled allows health-care facility staff members to safely evacuate people, specifically down emergency stairwells when elevators are shutdown.

Laborious patient transport methods, such as carrying the patient with bed sheets or using stationary chair devices can be hazardous to the safety of the patient and personnel. They often require more staff assistance and significantly more time to complete evacuation. Because of its simplicity and durability, an increasing number of hospitals and nursing homes have chosen the Med Sled as a vital part of their disaster preparedness plans. Restigouche Hospital Center in Campbellton, New Brunswick,has recently implemented a
disaster preparedness plan that utilizes the Med Sled for safe patient evacuation. According to Gilbert Belanger, physiotherapist and member of a Facility Emergency Management Committee at Restigouche Hospital Center, the Med Sled is ideal because it meets the facility's specific lifting criteria and can be easily stored. "Our hospital respects the safe lifting limit of 50 pounds per employee, and the Med Sled allows for just that. During an evacuation, the patient can be placed in the Med Sled and pulled to safety.

The Med Sled can be rolled up and easily stored when not in use," Belanger says. In an emergency evacuation situation every second counts. Taking the proper precautionary
steps for disaster preparedness is an imperative function of facility management. Should any type of emergency situation arise, an efficient disaster preparedness plan serves to safely and quickly evacuate every patient. Med Sled enables you to safely transport a person in a difficult rescue or emergency evacuation situation, while simultaneously providing protection.

Clifford Adkins is the
President of ARC Products.

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