Disaster Medicine

[Chris Knight]

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What sort of disaster med exposure do EM residents normally get? Which programs have you heard get the most exposure? and in what form?

I'm a good ways off from even applying to residency programs, but disaster medicine is a very strong interest of mine and there don't seem to be many programs with a good amount of exposure, leaving me with rather few EM programs that will fit me well. Programs with disaster med fellowships will likely be towards the top of my list (with there only being 5 or so that doesn't leave me with a lot of options), but which other programs have some interesting exposure that haven't gone so far as creating a fellowship?

I had always thought that just about any good program would be a sufficient stepping stone towards a disaster med fellowship and a career with lots of disaster med involvement, but very recently I was a controller/evaluator for a DHS full scale exercise and watched a few third year EM residents from a very "good" program absolutely botch triage and decon, get themselves killed, and rode with EMS to the same program's main ED only to watch the EM docs there totally screw up as well.

 

[polygonal]

I'm a resident at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). We get both basic and advanced disaster life support (BDLS, ADLS) in our orientation month. As I understand it, our program authored the courses that the AMA later purchased and are essentially the standard disaster courses. As a resident, you can be very involved as an instructor, DMAT and local diaster teams. Our program has a very strong focus on operational medicine including a large dedicated division within the department.

http://www.mcg.edu/ems/COM/
http://www.mcg.edu/ems/COM/Disaster/



Hope that helps.