What do hospitals do when back-up generators fail?

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Thego2guy

Thego2guy

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Greetings to all from Hurricane Sandy,

NYU hospital's back-up generators have failed. That means no power for anything... monitors, ventilators, etc...

The pediatric and neuro ICU's had to be evacuated.

What the hell do you in these situations? How does the medical community handle such emergencies? I PRESUME that they are not trained for such things because they always rely so heavily on their back-up generators. Navigating a hospital of this size (enormous skyscraper) with out any power must be pure chaos right now..

(Weill Cornell, Hospital for Special Surgery, MSKCC, Rockefllar Hospital, are all also half a block away from the East River. I hope all goes well for them).
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Thego2guy said:
Greetings to all from Hurricane Sandy,

NYU hospital's back-up generators have failed. That means no power for anything... monitors, ventilators, etc...

The pediatric and neuro ICU's had to be evacuated.

What the hell do you in these situations? How does the medical community handle such emergencies? I PRESUME that they are not trained for such things because they always rely so heavily on their back-up generators. Navigating a hospital of this size (enormous skyscraper) with out any power must be pure chaos right now..

(Weill Cornell, Hospital for Special Surgery, MSKCC, Rockefllar Hospital, are all also half a block away from the East River. I hope all goes well for them).
Click to expand...

Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
 
http://t.qkme.me/36d3v8.jpg

There's the article. If you don't feel like reading they pretty much had 50 Ambos take patients to different hospitals. Obviously an inconvience.. I'm sure every hospital acts different when the most unfortunate event happens.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN Mobile app please excuse punctuation and spelling
 
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BABSstudent said:
Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
Click to expand...

you are awesome lol
 
phikapdoctor said:
http://t.qkme.me/36d3v8.jpg

There's the article. If you don't feel like reading they pretty much had 50 Ambos take patients to different hospitals. Obviously an inconvience.. I'm sure every hospital acts different when the most unfortunate event happens.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN Mobile app please excuse punctuation and spelling
Click to expand...

lol at link
 
phikapdoctor said:
http://t.qkme.me/36d3v8.jpg

There's the article. If you don't feel like reading they pretty much had 50 Ambos take patients to different hospitals. Obviously an inconvience.. I'm sure every hospital acts different when the most unfortunate event happens.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN Mobile app please excuse punctuation and spelling
Click to expand...

Yeah, they are taking them to Sinai, and Sloan... Sloan is half a block away from the water, and Sinai is 2 blocks away from the water.

In the event that their **** goes to hell too... wtf do you do?
 
Thego2guy said:
Yeah, they are taking them to Sinai, and Sloan... Sloan is half a block away from the water, and Sinai is 2 blocks away from the water.

In the event that their **** goes to hell too... wtf do you do?
Click to expand...

keep moving them further and further away. no other option, first do no harm, do everything in your power to keep a patient alive.
 
Thego2guy said:
Yeah, they are taking them to Sinai, and Sloan... Sloan is half a block away from the water, and Sinai is 2 blocks away from the water.

In the event that their **** goes to hell too... wtf do you do?
Click to expand...

Keep moving them closer and closer to the water! Seriously people, did you not study for the MCAT? Salt water contains electrolytes! It conducts electricity. Now they just need to find a way to remove the pacemakers from everyone's chest and connect the wires to the water.

Boom! Problem solved.
 
BABSstudent said:
Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
Click to expand...

I laughed when I read this. :laugh:
Don't forget to add a step up transformer.
 
Monitors all have battery backup that should last long enough for ambulances to arrive. Vents I'm not so sure of, but you can always bag the patients. Umm, as far as I know, an internal disaster code would be called that would mobilize outside EMS and alert other hospitals of the disaster (in fact, the code would probably go out even if the generator didn't fail), and would remain on until the generator is restored, or power is restored.
 
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Nah. It's a bunch of firebenders who come in and light up the grid

Mako_working_in_power_plant.png
 
BABSstudent said:
Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
Click to expand...

Batteries in series increase the power through increased voltage; batteries in parallel only run longer!
 
During Katrina I remember hearing that medical personnel manually bagged patients for days. Electronic devices should have extended batteries for intermediate relief. Evacuate patients based on their acuity and hope power is restored.
 
Geebeejay said:
Monitors all have battery backup that should last long enough for ambulances to arrive. Vents I'm not so sure of, but you can always bag the patients. Umm, as far as I know, an internal disaster code would be called that would mobilize outside EMS and alert other hospitals of the disaster (in fact, the code would probably go out even if the generator didn't fail), and would remain on until the generator is restored, or power is restored.
Click to expand...

Thanks for giving me the only serious answer.
 
Renaissance Man said:
During Katrina I remember hearing that medical personnel manually bagged patients for days. Electronic devices should have extended batteries for intermediate relief. Evacuate patients based on their acuity and hope power is restored.
Click to expand...

Wow. :scared:
 
The average clinical hospital employee isn't well-trained for disaster situations, at least anywhere I've worked. I'm not from an area prone to disaster, though. I imagine the supervisors are trained so that things don't go to complete hell.
 
BABSstudent said:
Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
Click to expand...

This.
 
Well, at a hospital that conducts research, you could get all the rats to run on wheels to make electricity!

But seriously, that's why having two hospitals near each other is a good idea.
 
TheMightySmiter said:
The average clinical hospital employee isn't well-trained for disaster situations, at least anywhere I've worked. I'm not from an area prone to disaster, though. I imagine the supervisors are trained so that things don't go to complete hell.
Click to expand...

Definitely right. I've taken a few classes (because it interests me) in disaster training, mass casualty event training, and even some inhospital disaster training such as active shooter simulations.

The former aren't attended by very many people (luckily, EMS does many simulations of these types of events, so at least they'll be ready. Hospital response is mainly policy based, and determines where patients are placed). As far as internal disasters such as power outages, most of the information we receive of protocols are theoretical and ideal at best, and it's up to the resourcefulness of the staff (luckily, most hospital staff can be very resourceful) to figure out a way to get by in such disasters.

For the latter situation (active shooter), a response would involve the Senior Management, Security, the ED, EMS to transfer victims away from the hospital, especially if the ED is located far from the scene (hospitals are big), and Local Police. The classes were actually classified, and I couldn't tell any co-workers the protocols even if I wanted to. Most people in the hospital don't even know such a policy even exists.
 
I doubt that Cornell and Sinai are going to get evacuated, but if it came down to it they'd move patients to higher ground hospitals. Columbia has already received some transfers and I imagine that Harlem and St. Luke's are also fairly well protected from the flooding.
 
BABSstudent said:
Why do you think we have to learn physics and chemistry? Set up a redox reaction to create a flow of electrons, and then set up the batteries together in parallel to create a more powerful battery.

Duh.
Click to expand...

Hahahahaha!!! That's epic.

I'm guessing the critical machines used to help patients probably have backup batteries to keep them going for a while. Not too sure though. But like others said, the patients would be moved to other institutions.
 
Renaissance Man said:
During Katrina I remember hearing that medical personnel manually bagged patients for days. Electronic devices should have extended batteries for intermediate relief. Evacuate patients based on their acuity and hope power is restored.
Click to expand...

This. And from what I recall, they took shifts to prevent fatigue.



In all seriousness (ignoring Pikachus), care in a worst-case scenario like this would revert to basic life support (bagging, etc) until either power is restored, or the patient can be evacuated to another facility.
 
In Maryland during the hurricane county hospitals had to continually provide a census of their beds to the local government so if a hospital had to be evacuated they would know which hospital had which kind of bed (NICU, ICU, Telemetry etc...)
 
I'm not located in an area prone to disasters either, but the adequacy of training can be really department specific. We've had a few real mass casualty situations and the ED and critical care areas seemed to have a pretty good system in place to deal with it. The area I worked in had a vague SOP, poor communication (we should have been one of the first areas to be informed of the situation, but our director knew quite awhile before us and didn't bother to notify us). My roommate who'd only worked there for two years was coordinating the response when I showed up while mgmt stood around not really know what to do, just saying I don't know then basically nodding there head and agreeing when she suggested various things.

When I was training, I had asked one of my trainers what we did in mass casualty situation and she'd told me I probably wouldn't ever see one since they were pretty rare. We wound up having three that year.

Overall it went well, but it was frustrating. It's something we should have drilled for like the rest of the hospital so we weren't doing as much trouble shooting during the actual situation. Then again, you can't always train for these situations and you're always going to be doing some trouble shooting on the fly.
 
FermiParadox42 said:
In Maryland during the hurricane county hospitals had to continually provide a census of their beds to the local government so if a hospital had to be evacuated they would know which hospital had which kind of bed (NICU, ICU, Telemetry etc...)
Click to expand...

If that's true, that's a pretty dumb routine. People who don't know what they're doing (certain management staff, government) being in charge of disposition of patients is a recipe for disaster and causes unnecessary boarding of patients. This should be facilitated by hospital Care Coordinators (who will actually distribute patients logically) and EMS management, not government agents who only walk into hospitals to get treatment.
 
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