Abstract
Mass critical care caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 pandemic poses an extreme challenge to hospitals. The primary goal of hospital disaster preparedness and response is to maintain conventional or contingency care for as long as possible. Crisis care must be delayed as long as possible by appropriate measures. Increasing the intensive care unit (ICU) capacities is essential. In order to adjust surge capacity, the reduction of planned, elective patient care is an adequate response. However, this involves numerous problems that must be solved with a sense of proportion. This paper summarises preparedness and response measures recommended to acute care hospitals.
Highlights
Mass critical care is the predominant problem of the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic
On the basis of experience gained in individual hospitals, the German Society of Hospital Disaster Response Planning and Crisis Management (DAKEP) has developed comprehensive recommendations for the hospital management of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
“Hospital Operational Planning and Crisis Management”, which was recently released by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance [2, 3]
Summary
Mass critical care is the predominant problem of the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. In order to ensure the separation of SARS-CoV-2positive patients from other patient routes, hospitals have to take extensive measures including setting up separate areas [10]: In the emergency room On normal wards Within intermediate care (IMC) and ICU In the delivery rooms In the operating theatres All these measures require additional staff as well as careful interdisciplinary and interprofessional planning. It is of utmost importance that the level of contingency care is maintained with regard to staff If this is not possible in a short period of time due to high patient numbers, care can only be provided at the cost of losing specialisation. In order to achieve the goal of maintaining the response level of contingency care, rooms and areas which are—at least in their basic structure—equipped and intended for medical treatment, should be used as long as possible [4, 5].
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