when I'm not taking care of the rich and famous on movie sets I play around with HAM radio. I recently joined an ARES group, that stands for; Amateur Radio Emergency Services for those who've never heard of it.
It's a local group, based in L.A. that provides HAM operators in times of natural disasters and the like. This particular group has aligned themselves in particular with 20 some odd local hospitals.
Anyway, we got a rather urgent request earlier this week to help out as the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center closed their old location and moved into their new location. Hospital staff and ambulance crews had to transport over 400 pts. from critical to DNR's to relatively minor.
We helped with coordinating communications within the hospital and the new location, which is literally next door to the old one.
The exercise was originally scheduled to take place over 2 days, I'm happy and a little bit proud to report that the entire move was done in one day, today. From 0630 this morning until approx. 1730 tonight over 400 pts. were assessed, packaged and transported via BLS, ALS, CC, and even a couple of NICU specialised ambulances, both private as well as County owned and operated.
So far as I know there were zero problems to speak of, if anything, things actually worked better than hoped for.
It was interesting to watch the crews work from my perspective, I got to talk to 2 associates, one of whom I went to EMT school with and one of whom is an aspiring Set Medic.
There were some medical/ethical situations that had to be addressed, couple of patients near death, too ill to transport but soon no hospital or staff to care for them, what would you do? Keep an entire ward open and operating or risk moving them? We also had to deal with a couple of MRSA pts. as well as some othere severely infectious pts.
All in all, a good day.
John E.
It's a local group, based in L.A. that provides HAM operators in times of natural disasters and the like. This particular group has aligned themselves in particular with 20 some odd local hospitals.
Anyway, we got a rather urgent request earlier this week to help out as the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center closed their old location and moved into their new location. Hospital staff and ambulance crews had to transport over 400 pts. from critical to DNR's to relatively minor.
We helped with coordinating communications within the hospital and the new location, which is literally next door to the old one.
The exercise was originally scheduled to take place over 2 days, I'm happy and a little bit proud to report that the entire move was done in one day, today. From 0630 this morning until approx. 1730 tonight over 400 pts. were assessed, packaged and transported via BLS, ALS, CC, and even a couple of NICU specialised ambulances, both private as well as County owned and operated.
So far as I know there were zero problems to speak of, if anything, things actually worked better than hoped for.
It was interesting to watch the crews work from my perspective, I got to talk to 2 associates, one of whom I went to EMT school with and one of whom is an aspiring Set Medic.
There were some medical/ethical situations that had to be addressed, couple of patients near death, too ill to transport but soon no hospital or staff to care for them, what would you do? Keep an entire ward open and operating or risk moving them? We also had to deal with a couple of MRSA pts. as well as some othere severely infectious pts.
All in all, a good day.
John E.