The pediatric hospital incident command system: an innovative approach to hospital emergency management.

摘要

Over the past decade, significant attention has been directed to local, state, and national emergency preparedness efforts. Communication, collaboration, and standardization of responses have been an important part of those efforts. One critical component of that response is the healthcare system, in particular, hospitals. Hospitals are faced with not only planning on response procedures during mass casualty events such as hazardous material contamination or the recent H1N1 pandemic but also responding to events in which the hospital becomes the "victim." This was most strikingly displayed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.Since 2000, the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) has been widely used as model for managing hospitals of any size during a disaster. This is an incident management system based on the Incident Command System in which response efforts are organized under the headings of Operations, Logistics, Finance, and Planning. There are dozens of specific job assignments made in this system-each with its own "job action sheet" that outlines specific roles and responsibilities.