Pubblicazioni - Disaster management_eng - Protezione Civile

Disaster Management

Rescue and medical organization in case of disaster

Authors:

Antonio Morra
Lorenzo Odetto
Carmine Bozza
Pierangelo Bozzetto

Anno: 2002

Preface
 
Management
of the medical aspects of a complex event, as disasters often are,
is certainly difficult, even for modern Emergency Systems.

To this we must add the absolute lack of a national panorama of a specific
training process to prepare doctors and professional nurses for the tasks of
coordination, indispensable for managing and solving the problems intrinsic
to out-of-hospital and in-hospital rescue.



To reduce the distances that separate us culturally from other European
countries, and to attempt to mitigate the damages that an exceptional
event can cause society, the Gruppo Istruttori "Maxi-emergenza" of
the Health Company / Azienda Sanitaria 2 of Turin and the Associazione
Italiana di Medicina delle Catastrofi have ideated, tested and actuated
a training program aimed at medical operators for the purpose of
increasing awareness on the issues intrinsic to disasters by providing
a proper multidisciplinary approach to their operative solutions.



The first teaching attempt was the Hospital Disaster Management (H.D.M.) Course,
managed by the A.S.L. 2 of Turin, which trained the medical operators of many
A.S.L.s, in particular on the in-hospital aspects of the problem.



The Authors have therefore expanded the field to the approach of
rescues in a "hostile" environment, i.e. the Emergency System intervention
on the field, with the difficulties of the initial phase of an exceptional
event.

This operative area is connected to and precedes the proposed solutions for
in-hospital management of the event.

This complete "cultural" process has been evaluated scientifically and introduced
into the "University Specialization Course on the Planning and Management of
Medical Interventions in Disastrous Maxi-emergencies" of the School of Medicine
and Surgery of the University of Bari and the "European Master on Disaster
Medicine" of the C.E.M.E.C. and the Republic of San Marino.

These courses are the first to have been set up in Italy to deal with the issues
intrinsic to rescues during disasters in an organized way, and are the first
real recognition of the attempt launched many years ago by the Authors to teach
about the difficulties of rescue operations in disasters.

We hope that the tenets of this book are shared by the readers, but we are
also prepared to accept constructive criticism that could help us jointly build
a Rescue System that can bring Italy closer to the countries that are more
advanced in this matter.

"All truth passes through three
stages.

First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third,
it is accepted as being self- evident."

(Schopenhauer)