[Management of Clinical Capacity Overload Due to Mass Patient Influx]. / Management einer klinischen Kapazitätenüberlastung durch Massenanfall von Patienten.

Hospitals play a crucial role in the management of large-scale emergencies or disasters. This has been clearly demonstrated by the recent terrorist attacks in Europe, by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and currently by the Ukraine war. In order to cope with extraordinary situations and large-scale emergencies, such as mass casualty incidents, hospitals need to be prepared in detail - by preparing and implementing a hospital contingency plan. The article presented here describes in hospital preparation for a mass casualty incident.

Hospital preparedness for mass critical care during SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Mass critical care caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 pandemic poses an extreme challenge to hospitals. The primary goal of hospital disaster preparedness and response is to maintain conventional or contingency care for as long as possible. Crisis care must be delayed as long as possible by appropriate measures. Increasing the intensive care unit (ICU) capacities is essential. In order to adjust surge capacity, the reduction of planned, elective patient care is an adequate response. However, this involves numerous problems that must be solved with a sense of proportion. This paper summarises preparedness and response measures recommended to acute care hospitals.

[The Hospital Emergency Plan: Important Tool for Disaster Preparedness]. / Alarm- und Einsatzplanung im Krankenhaus: Vorbereitung auf Großschadenslagen.

Hospitals need to be prepared for any kind of disaster. The terrorist attacks and mass shootings that took place in Europe in recent years impressively demonstrated the capability of hospitals to manage such challenging and disastrous events. To be adequately prepared, the hospital emergency plan is a very important tool. In this article we describe the entire process of drafting the emergency plan. We discuss the theoretical background as well as different models of disaster planning and we give important practical hints and tips for those in charge of the hospital disaster planning.