I've just been asked to look over the new Major Incident Plan for my
hospital. We're a 400 bed DGH just outside Dartford and are the nearest
hospital for Bluewater shopping centre (largest in Europe), the
Dartford bridge and tunnel and the new crosschannel railway station at
Ebbsfleet.
The new plan deviates from the Hospital MIMMS manual in several
respects:
1. the Senior Surgeon, senior orthopedic dr, on call anaesthetist
report on arrival for briefing to the medical controller in control
room rather than to the senior emergency physician in the emergency
room. These senior doctors report to the medical controller rather than
to anyone in the emergency dept.The medical controller is the
consultant physician on call.
2. The chain of command within the emergency department is not clear.
The senior surgeon/physician/medic do not report to the senior
emergency physician but liaise with each other. The second consultant
physician is repsonsible for coordinating medical response and contacts
the Consultant Anaesthetist in A&E for a briefing.
Although I have not been responsible for drawing up new major incident
plans before, I am doubtful about the wisdom of this system. I would be
grateful for comments.
Brendan Conway
Consultant in Emergency Medicine
Darenth Valley Hospital
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