Hospital Preparedness for Incidents with Chemical Agents

Although a chemical terrorist attack is a low-probability event for any single community, recent events have demonstrated that exposure to chemical agents has the potential to pose serious problems for hospitals. The community expects that hospitals are adequately prepared for timely and appropriate medical care of casualties of incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. At present, the medical community has limited experience with these agents and the majority of hospitals are inadequately prepared to deal with such an event. This article presents an overview of hospital preparedness in general and some real issues for hospitals affected by an event involving chemical agents, and discusses specific aspects including identification of the incident, staff and hospital protection, decontamination, triage, logistics, training, and psychological effects. Much research needs to be done to improve the preparedness and response capabilities of hospitals.