Cape Coast, Oct 15, GNA – Forty-one Emergency Physicians on Friday ended a five- day training course in disaster medicine in Cape Coast.
The idea was to open them up to better understand their roles during disasters, learn how to liaise with other agencies and plan to manage disasters to reduce the number of casualties in such occurrences.
The participants were introduced to Disaster Medicine, Hitting Surge Capacity, Mass Casualty, Incident Triage and Development of effective emergency operations plan among others.
Dr Roxane Richter, Mass Casualty Disaster Specialist from the United Sates (US), noted that in mass casualty event where there were too many victims, hospitals tended to record high rates of casualties than they could manage.
The training was therefore to expose healthcare providers to a very special type of triage and rapid treatment as well as transport, so that such high casualties could be well managed to avoid preventable deaths.
She said a similar workshop had been held in Tamale and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospitals in Tamale and Kumasi respectively, where over hundred emergency physicians benefitted.
Dr Eszter Momade, in -charge of the Emergency Unit of the Cape Coast Teaching (CCTH), said the purpose was to learn how to effectively manage accident situations from the scene to the emergency ward.
« We are emergency physicians so we deal with this kind of traumas on a daily basis, but the dynamics change when we have large numbers, » she said.
Dr Momade said the practice had always seen accident victims brought to hospitals without sorting them out and some were often not handled well.
She said the training had been beneficial and expressed the hope that from henceforth accident victims would be brought in a controlled function rather than the chaotic manner which usually occurred.
Apart from the training, Dr Momade said, there was the need for the Region to develop an Emergency Operations Plan to further deepen emergency medical services.
« We cannot handle all accident victims in the same hospital and so there is the need for collaboration within hospitals in the Region such that each hospital will know who they would attend to depending on their level, » she said.
Dr Joseph Bonney , a Specialist in Emergency Medicine, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, said efforts in disaster management in the country was weak because of lack of frequent training.
He described the training as apt and underscored the need for the organisation of community events, to educate people on what to do during disasters in addition to the frequent in-service training for health workers.
Mr Fred Nyankah, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of CCTH, said the training had given a boost to the physical and psychological preparedness of the Hospital to handle emergency situations.
He noted that psychological preparedness positively affected treatment processes and assured that the Hospital, which had adequate equipment and personnel, was poised to manage emergency situations.
