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Fear, Panic, and Bio-events: A Population-Based Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

P. Gregg Greenough*
Affiliation:
Director of Research, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Extract

Reading the Bracha and Burkle article gave me a flashback to a military course I took early in my career:the Combat Casualty Care Course (C4), an exercise of mass-casualty triage and management. Triaging and treating the severely injured–all types of blunt and penetrating injuries–proved relatively manageable with practice. However, what I distinctly remember as the most challenging, were those cases of stress-induced psychosis that the course leaders periodically threw at us. Dazed “soldiers” with the “hundred mile stares” and predictably unpredictable thoughts and behaviors, drained our valuable resourcesas they required constant vigilance in addition to their “three hots and a cot” (three meals and a place to sleep).

Type
Editorial Review
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2006

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References

1.Burkle, FM: Population-based triage-management in response to surge capacity requirements during a large-scale bioevent. Acad Emerg Med 2006.(in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Nickell, LA, Crighton, EJ, Tracy, CS et al. : Psychosoical effects of SARS on hospital staff aurvey of a large teritiary care institution. CMAJ 2004;170(5):793798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.Schabas, R: SARS: Prudence not panic. CMAJ 2003;168(1):14321434.Google Scholar