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Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Locals join elite disaster response
Harborview teams to be called on for triage, trauma care

By MARY VUONG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Harborview Medical Center will deliver triage and more extensive care to Americans at disaster sites around the world as one of three institutions tapped by the U.S. government to form International Medical Surgical Response Teams.

Harborview -- the only Level I trauma center in Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho -- and the University of Miami Ryder Trauma Center were selected last month.

They join Massachusetts General Hospital.

"It is becoming a global medical community," said Dr. Ronald Maier, chief of surgery and leader of the new response team for Harborview.

"This is what we're good at, so we should be helping."

Harborview is recruiting volunteers from its organization and the community, especially health care providers in emergency medicine, orthopedics, anesthesiology and surgery. For more information, e-mail Anne Newcombe at: enewcomb@u.washington.edu.

Participants will be trained in treating patients outside traditional civilian settings, such as establishing a mobile tent and operating room and functioning under a hierarchical system patterned after the military, Maier said.

Teams of surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists, among others, will receive special passports and, if they are on call, respond to man-made or natural disasters within 16 hours' notice.

Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, which provide support and triage at disaster sites, work closely with medical surgical response teams, which give high-level specialty services and more definitive care.

The response-team idea originally was intended to help Americans caught in disasters abroad, Maier said, but after events such as the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001 -- to which Massachusetts General Hospital deployed its volunteers -- the guidelines were broadened to cover the continental United States as well.

Although the government-funded program was created to provide medical support for U.S. citizens, he added, "it's basically an outreach to the world."

P-I reporter Mary Vuong can be reached at 206-448-8011 or maryvuong@seattlepi.com

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