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. 2020 Jun;230(6):1080-1091.e3.
doi: 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2020.03.019. Epub 2020 Mar 30.

Maximizing the Calm before the Storm: Tiered Surgical Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Samuel Wade Ross  1 , Cynthia W Lauer  2 , William S Miles  2 , John M Green  2 , A Britton Christmas  2 , Addison K May  2 , Brent D Matthews  2
Affiliations

Maximizing the Calm before the Storm: Tiered Surgical Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Samuel Wade Ross et al. J Am Coll Surg. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first diagnosed in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has now spread throughout the world, being verified by the World Health Organization as a pandemic on March 11. This had led to the calling of a national emergency on March 13 in the US. Many hospitals, healthcare networks, and specifically, departments of surgery, are asking the same questions about how to cope and plan for surge capacity, personnel attrition, novel infrastructure utilization, and resource exhaustion. Herein, we present a tiered plan for surgical department planning based on incident command levels. This includes acute care surgeon deployment (given their critical care training and vertically integrated position in the hospital), recommended infrastructure and transfer utilization, triage principles, and faculty, resident, and advanced care practitioner deployment.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Principle of social distancing to reduce the curve of uncontrolled transmission to levels more sustainable to the healthcare system capacity. (Represented with permission from Carl T Bergstrom).
None
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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