RESEARCH PHYSICIAN
Research corporation needs a physician for an ongoing national health/nutrition study. Individual will be part of a large medical team.
Must be licensed in at least one state. FULL-TIME CONTINUOUS TRAVEL REQUIRED. Fluency in reading, writing, and speaking English is required. Competitive salary is augmented by paid malpractice, meal/travel allowance, holidays, and individual housing/car; subsidized health insurance available.
To learn more about this position and apply, go to
www.westat.com/ fieldjobs and enter Job ID 5918BR. WESTAT EOE
disaster response in Texas. She learned of the explosion in West about 10 min- utes after it happened. Her husband, W. Nim Kidd, MD, is TDEM chief. “He got the call about the explosion while we were eating dinner, and it didn’t take long for both of us to spring into action,” Dr. Kidd said. She drove to West from San Antonio and arrived four hours after the blast. “By the time I arrived, all of the in-
jured patients had been transported to hospitals,” she said.
That’s how the system should work.
As Dr. Kidd explains, in 2010, DSHS created eight Emergency Medical Task Force (EMTF) regions in the state. As part of TDMS, the goal of the task forc- es is to oversee the organization of the following five components within each region:
• Ambulance strike teams of five am- bulances and one supervisor per re- gion that travel together to evacuate nursing homes, hospitals, and other health facilities;
Let TMA Online Classified Ads Work for You!
• Sell/Buy Medical Office Equipment and Furnishings
• Sell/Buy a Medical Practice • Hire Medical Staff … and much more!
For as little as $25, you can place your classified ad and reach Texas physicians like you!
Go to www.
texmed.org/ classifieds
started today. 44 TEXAS MEDICINE July 2013 Scan to get
• Nurse strike teams of five emergency and specialty nurses per region that assist hospitals overwhelmed by in- coming patients;
• Ambulance bus teams that can trans- port up to 20 bed-confined or critical patients in large ambulances (two per region) equipped with medical gear, physicians, and EMS personnel;
• Mobile medical unit teams that set up large climate-controlled tents that serve as on-site emergency rooms, staffed by emergency physicians, nurses, and pharmacists; and
• Command and control teams that oversee logistics in the wake of an emergency.
Dr. Kidd says these components work together to effectively respond to large- scale emergencies. Aside from deploying EMTFs for planned events like mara- thons and large festivals, the explosion in West represents the first no-notice, un- planned EMTF implementation. “I’m personally very pleased with how well the system functioned in response to what happened in West,” Dr. Kidd said.
The EMTFs deployed four ambulance
buses from North Texas and Schertz, one medical mobile unit team from San An- tonio, and a portable morgue unit from the Houston area. Additionally, a medi- cal incident support team of emergency medical services supervisory personnel assisted. “Fortunately, we didn’t need the porta- ble morgue. We determined we needed only one medical mobile unit team to treat minor blast injuries, eardrum rup- tures, sinus pain, and cuts for the first 48 hours after the event,” Dr. Kidd said.
Physician volunteers Dr. Kidd stresses the importance of hav- ing a structured, formal system through which physicians and other health pro- fessionals can volunteer during emer- gencies. She says physicians showing up at the scene of a mass emergency unan- nounced can actually be dangerous. “All medical personnel who help out during a disaster have to be with a group that has vetted their credentials. Patient safety has to be protected,” she said. “It’s also essential that doctors working at the scene of a disaster understand inci- dent command structure to ensure their own safety. The structure ensures every- one knows who the physicians are, what they should be doing, and where they’re supposed to be.”
She encourages emergency medicine physicians to volunteer to join one of the EMTFs. Volunteering requires complet- ing an application process and under- going training on a quarterly basis. To inquire about volunteering, physicians should visit
www.tdms.org/county.aspx, select their county from the list, and contact the district coordinator or EMTF coordinator. DSHS recognizes the value of local physician volunteers and encourages physicians and other health profes- sionals to register with the Texas Disas- ter Volunteer Registry (TDVR) online (https://texasdisastervolunteerregistry .org) to be credentialed and verified as a volunteer health professional before a disaster.
“It is important for volunteers, espe-
cially those with a professional license, to complete the registration and creden-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60