With the Las Vegas shootings, the ability of emergency responders to handle large scale incidents has been again thrust to the forefront. While many hospitals are capable of handling smaller incidents, not all places are prepared for a sudden influx of hundreds of people to emergency wards. Some places, however, are constantly working to ensure their readiness, in the event of tragedy. “We train in taking in over 100 patients at a time and we are certainly prepared to do so,” UC Davis Medical Center chief of trauma Dr. Joseph Galante told local news channel KCRA.“It’s a matter of training yourself to make a shift for what’s good for the individual patient that we see every day, to doing what’s the best for all the patients that are flooding in that need to receive care.”
This training includes not only staff medical actions, but also efforts by the staff to teach civilians how to provide emergency first aid, under a program called “Stop the Bleed”. “It involves tourniquets,” Galante explains. “It involves something as basic as using your own T-shirt or using the victim’s own clothing to actually pack the wound and stop the hemorrhage.”
Law enforcement has also had to consider such mass casualties and the effect on their approaches. Sacramento County Sheriff’s Sgt. Shaun Hampton spoke of the emphasis on warning people in the area via public address systems and via social media, and of the priority of stopping the shooter over helping victim. “We are going to have to pass up victims to stop the threat and stop the shooter from taking more lives and injuring more people,” Hampton told KCRA.
Source:
http://www.kcra.com/article/how-las-vegas-shooting-changed-emergency-response-in-norcal/12776514
