What's Going On?: A Disaster in Disaster Communication Between Medical Teams at Hospitals

Communication amongst medical staff is crucial, for they must efficiently manage resources and patients. Especially in disasters, inefficient communication will potentially lead to medical incidents. A disaster training session was held and designed in a way that problems were likely to occur. The training was held in Kyoto University Hospital, and 74 hospital staff were split into six main areas: disaster countermeasures headquarters, triage headquarters, primary triage area, red area, yellow area, and green area. We observed the communication using handheld transceivers (HTs) and found two problems: (1) information was out of sync between groups, and (2) HTs were sometimes used when they should not have been used. We conclude with a suggestion of implementing an information system to improve management between areas.