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Surgical workload of a foreign medical team after T yphoon H aiyan
Author(s) -
Read David J.,
Holian Annette,
Moller CeaCea,
Poutawera Vaughan
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
anz journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.426
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-2197
pISSN - 1445-1433
DOI - 10.1111/ans.13175
Subject(s) - medicine , workload , typhoon , software deployment , surgical team , documentation , medical emergency , government (linguistics) , general surgery , surgery , management , engineering , oceanography , software engineering , computer science , economics , programming language , geology , linguistics , philosophy
Background On 8 N ovember 2013, T yphoon H aiyan struck the P hilippines causing widespread loss of lives and infrastructures. At the request of the G overnment of the P hilippines, the A ustralian G overnment deployed a surgical field hospital to the city of T acloban for 4 weeks. This paper describes the establishment of the hospital, the surgical workload and handover to the local health system upon the end of deployment. Methods A M icrosoft excel database was utilized throughout the deployment, recording demographics, relationship to the typhoon and surgical procedure performed. Results Over the 21 days of surgical activity, the A ustralian field hospital performed 222 operations upon 131 persons. A mean of 10.8 procedures were performed per day (range 3–20). The majority (70.2%) of procedures were soft tissue surgery. Diabetes was present in 22.9% and 67.9% were typhoon‐related. The A ustralian M edical A ssistance T eam field hospital adhered to the W orld H ealth O rganization guidelines for foreign medical teams, in ensuring informed consent, appropriate anaesthesia and surgery, and worked collaboratively with local surgeons, ensuring adequate documentation and clinical handover. Conclusion This paper describes the experience of a trained, equipped and collaborative surgical foreign medical team in T acloban in the aftermath of T yphoon H aiyan. Sepsis from foot injuries in diabetic patients constituted an unexpected majority of the workload. New presentations of typhoon‐related injuries were presented throughout the deployment.