National Pharmacy Responce Team

[DownonthePharm]

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Its part of the National Disaster Medical System in the Dept of Homeland Security. Its purpose is to mobilize pharmacists and pharmacy techs in the event of a large scale medical disaster.

It sounds pretty interesting, does anyone here have any experience with this sort of thing?

 

[Caverject]

I don't personally but this team failed miserably during the Hurricane Katrina response. They got a grand total of ONE pharmacist to come and help

 

[kwizard]

I don't personally but this team failed miserably during the Hurricane Katrina response. They got a grand total of ONE pharmacist to come and help

A lot of the problems w/ Katrina were due to various gaps in communication b/w FEMA, NPRT (National Pharmacy Response Team), and the various state boards of pharmacy (SBOP). Many of the SBOPs had several volunteers ready to go, but the gaps in communication led to various coordination issues w/ pharmacists not being sent to the appropriate places of need. From what I understand FEMA is getting most of the blame.

The following link may be helpful:
http://www.ashp.org/news/ShowArticle.cfm?id=13176

 

[Cocogirl]

One of the pharmacists that I work with was dispatched during Katrina as part of a National Disaster Response Team. He regularly goes to disaster conferences and "drills" where they set up mock disasters so everyone knows what they are doing in case of a real disaster. He loves doing it and wrote regular emails and sent pics while he was in New Orleans. He finds it really rewarding (obviously!) and it requires considerable training. Our hospital is really flexible when he needs to go (although I'm not sure if he gets paid to do this - haven't asked him).

Anyways - that's the scoop.