Drilling and evaluation of emergency rescue against mass casualties at general hospitals in Tianjin

Objective To understand the ability and level of emergency rescue at general hospitals in Tianjin city. Methods Such actions as formulating plans and examination forms, establishing assessment indicators and evaluation criteria, and simulation exercises were performed to evaluate the capacity of 28 general hospitals in terms of their organizational structure, emergency response, event reporting, and summary assessment. Results The emergency response assessment system consisted of 4 level-1 indicators, 19 level-2 indicators and 58 level-3 indicators. 28 hospitals were found high in their overall emergency response capacity, but some were found with setbacks. For example, the " organizational structure" scored the highest in 4 first-level indicators, up to 88.91%, while " incident report" scored the lowest, down to 67.99%. Among level-2 indicators, professional emergency professional procedures and initial reporting scored the lowest. Conclusions In order to further improve the ability of medical institutions to respond to emergency events, the hospitals are recommended to enhance their backup resources for emergency response, their staff′s awareness of first aid knowledge and first aid skills, as well as their timeliness of initial reports and the completeness of progress reports. Key words: Emergency medicine; Emergency drills; Emergencies; Medical institutions; Tianjin