Clinical review: SARS – lessons in disaster management
Open Access
- 1 January 2005
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Critical Care
- Vol. 9 (4), 384-389
- https://doi.org/10.1186/cc3041
Abstract
Disaster management plans have traditionally been required to manage major traumatic events that create a large number of victims. Infectious diseases, whether they be natural (e.g. SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and influenza) or the result of bioterrorism, have the potential to create a large influx of critically ill into our already strained hospital systems. With proper planning, hospitals, health care workers and our health care systems can be better prepared to deal with such an eventuality. This review explores the Toronto critical care experience of coping in the SARS outbreak disaster. Our health care system and, in particular, our critical care system were unprepared for this event, and as a result the impact that SARS had was worse than it could have been. Nonetheless, we were able to organize a response rapidly during the outbreak. By describing our successes and failures, we hope to help others to learn and avoid the problems we encountered as they develop their own disaster management plans in anticipation of similar future situations.Keywords
This publication has 22 references indexed in Scilit:
- Health Communication during SARSEmerging Infectious Diseases, 2004
- SARS — Looking Back over the First 100 DaysThe New England Journal of Medicine, 2003
- Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Critically Ill Patients With Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeJAMA, 2003
- Critically Ill Patients With Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeJAMA, 2003
- Clinical Features and Short-term Outcomes of 144 Patients With SARS in the Greater Toronto AreaJAMA, 2003
- A Major Outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Hong KongThe New England Journal of Medicine, 2003
- ICU management of severe acute respiratory syndromeIntensive Care Medicine, 2003
- Bioterrorism and critical careCritical Care Clinics, 2003
- Challenging beliefs and ethical concepts: the collateral damage of SARSCritical Care, 2003
- Communication in the Toronto critical care community: important lessons learned during SARSCritical Care, 2003