Mass Casualty Incident

Most people think of wilderness medicine as providing medical care in a remote setting where access to conventional healthcare resources is limited or unavailable. They imagine someone treating a wound, applying a tourniquet, performing CPR, or fashioning a splint out of sticks and a bandana enabling a hiker with a broken leg to hobble to safety. 

Few rarely consider the role of wilderness medicine in mass casualty events such as earthquakes, flash floods, wildfires, and other natural and manufactured disasters. These incidences result in multiple injuries that can overwhelm the resources available to treat the injured.

In the context of a mass casualty event, wilderness medicine providers fill all their traditional roles — caring for the injured and improvising to overcome the lack of medical equipment and supplies. However, their role often expands in scope as they face the challenges of assisting multiple patients at the same time suffering from diverse injuries. 

Meeting this challenge requires knowledge of the system and resources available, along with an ability think and act quickly and rationally in order to triage patients. That means  sorting and prioritizing patients on larger scale, based on the severity and urgency of their medical needs — again in the context of available resources.

Defining “Mass Casualty Incident”

A mass casualty incident (MCI) is any (more…)