8.1. INTRODUCTION
Health care institutions play an important role in eliminating the health- related consequences of emergency situations. Their preparedness for work and resistance to damaging factors determines the effective implementation of the tasks assigned to them. For a doctor of any specialty and in any position it is important not only to have some knowledge of disaster medicine, but to be able to perform their duties in the event of imminent and ongoing emergencies. This is even more important when the doctor is included in non-professional emergency response team in a hospital.
Common tasks for all health care institutions in emergency response:
► forecasting the emergency scenario and its assessment;
► planning the work of the facility in an emergency;
► organization of measures to prepare the facility for emergency;
► organization of protection of personnel and material resources from the impact of damaging factors of emergency;
► increasing the sustainability of the facility in emergency.
The impact of damaging factors of an emergency can disrupt the activities of hospitals, clinics, centers of sanitary surveillance, blood transfusion sta-
tions, pharmacies and pharmaceutical warehouses. Therefore, in the mode of daily operation, health institutions and their personnel are trained to work in emergency situations.
The administration of a health facility can be given a set of tasks consisting in the following:
► the putative scenario of the emergency, the headcount and time frame for organizing non-professional emergency response teams, the procedure for providing them with property and transport.
► specifying the profile of victims and how many are to be admitted;
► the time when the facility should be ready for admission, and the timeframe for admission, triage, care and evacuation of the patients;
► determining the site where the facility will be deployed in the event of an evacuation.