Kirschenbaum Alan
36586 Sde Yakov, Israel.
Nat Hazards (Dordr). 2021;108(1):163-175. doi: 10.1007/s11069-021-04674-0. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
A major challenge for health services worldwide is in providing adequate medical care during mass disasters. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights this difficulty. Patient surge, a consequence of most types of disasters that contribute to trauma experiences, is a primary factor in disrupting such care as it is composed of worried well persons and those experiencing psychosocial trauma that can severely disrupt and overwhelm effective acute hospital based health care. We review the literature and propose a potential solution framework to reduce such a surge that relies on exploiting community social networks as first responders. We utilize and integrate literature based evidence on patient surge, community disaster behaviors and community based informal social networks to examine reasons for patient surge to hospitals. We then propose that leveraging community based social networks as a potent deterrent for non-critically injured, especially those who have experienced psychosocial trauma or the worried well, from seeking hospital care during ongoing disasters. By emphasizing the social capital inherent in community based social networks, this perspective posits an alternative cost-effective means of reducing patient surge.
全球卫生服务面临的一项重大挑战是在大规模灾难期间提供足够的医疗护理。持续的新冠疫情凸显了这一困难。患者激增是大多数导致创伤经历的灾难类型的结果，是扰乱此类护理的主要因素，因为它由担忧健康的人和经历心理社会创伤的人组成，这些人会严重扰乱并压垮有效的急性医院医疗保健服务。我们回顾了相关文献，并提出了一个潜在的解决方案框架，以减少这种激增情况，该框架依赖于利用社区社会网络作为第一响应者。我们利用并整合基于文献的关于患者激增、社区灾难行为和社区非正式社会网络的证据，来研究患者涌向医院的原因。然后我们提出，利用社区社会网络作为一种强大的威慑力量，阻止非重伤患者，尤其是那些经历过心理社会创伤或担忧健康的人，在灾难期间前往医院就医。通过强调社区社会网络中固有的社会资本，这一观点提出了一种降低患者激增的具有成本效益的替代方法。
