Modeling the workflow of a field hospital in earthquake conditions

Abstract

Earthquake is one of the most destructive natural disasters. Usually it is followed by a great number of human casualties, material losses and underlying consequences. Therefore organization of efficient medical aid in regions that suffer of earthquakes is an essential task for disaster medicine services. There exists a number of regulations that define the amount of medical aid needed considering the disaster extent. However, they are usually heuristic and based on the rare disasters cases and drills. What is more, they usually prescribe using only uniform medical teams and do not consider involving specialized medical teams that can be vital in certain scenarios.In this study we propose a novel approach to investigate possible medical response teams combinations in temporary disaster medical facilities. To achieve that, we model the workflow of a field hospital to investigate optimal amount and complement of required medical teams in earthquake conditions. Our simulation model considers incoming flow intensity and patients distribution over injuries extent and localization. Moreover, we compare universal and specialized medical teams to discover limits to applicability of different field hospital personnel configurations.For each modeling scenario we found optimal amounts of universal and specialized medical teams. Our findings can be used for emergency policy making to help to define a structure of required medical aid.