Doctors unprepared for depot disaster

This story was published Sat, Apr 20, 2002

By Karen Zacharias
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON -- The Army replaced the outdated supplies of Good Shepherd Medical Center's sarin antidote Thursday, but the amount was only enough to treat 12 people.

Army officials told the hospital the atropine was only to be used on workers from the Umatilla Chemical Depot should there be a release of deadly nerve agent.

"I have very little means of treating the general public with what the Army has given me," said Ken Franz, the hospital's director of emergency management.

However, the Oregon Department of Human Services promised to provide enough for 200 people.

Meanwhile, a $1.5 million federal grant aimed at helping Oregon's medical community prepare against bioterrorism will be used, in part, to help train doctors how to handle nerve agent contamination from the depot.

Tom Johnson, administrator for the Oregon Department of Human Services, said Friday that emergency management officials have been focused on the "what ifs" of a terrorist attack at the depot for some time. But little has been done to help train physicians, he said.

Particularly emergency room physicians.

Hospitals such as Good Shepherd in Hermiston rely primarily on private contractors to find doctors for emergency rooms. Physicians fly in to work a shift or two, then leave, sometimes never to return.

"We're thinking that one component of the grant will be used to help train those contract physicians," Johnson said.

A recent evaluation by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention raised the question of whether emergency room physicians know how to best treat patients in the event of a nerve agent release from the depot.

"Because exposure to chemical weapons is a rare event, there is little routine training for these events and the treatment of chemical agent-exposed patients ... Few if any of the 'front-line' physicians are trained in their response and treatment," CDC evaluators noted.

Johnson said he doesn't have any doubt that Good Shepherd's staff could aptly handle a depot emergency. However, he said training is a good thing to do.

Franz agreed.

"That'd be wonderful if we could institute a training program for our physicians," Franz said.

However, he said in the more than 11 years he's been at the hospital, he has not been able to train any of the doctors.

Good Shepherd uses a company from the East Coast to find its emergency room doctors. Franz said it's not unusual to see a physician only once or twice a month, or even a year.

"I have a core group of four doctors who are here frequently," Franz said.

Asked to define frequently, he said maybe a couple of shifts a month. Those doctors come from Portland, Hood River and Seattle. Franz said his biggest concern is not whether the 14 nurses who work in emergency room are capable of handling a nerve agent event. But he said he frets about the physicians.

"Our doctors are competent with their jobs, but there are special areas of expertise required for dealing with a chemical agent," Franz said.

 

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