Designing Disaster Victim's Medical Record; A Step toward Crisis Management

Health care systems in disaster management encounter with the unique challenges which including the triage, treatment large numbers of victims and their information management. To ensure proper documentation of victims as a prelude to information management and effective triage and treatment, an appropriate and applicable medical record is required in a disaster. Because ordinary medical records which have been used in patients would not be effective in emergencies and accidents and their applications would be sophisticated. So, the aim of this research was to design the disaster-victim medical record to document and triage victims easily during disaster. This research was an applied descriptive study Source of information was libraries and accepted articles in indexed journals. A survey from organizations correspondent to address the disaster victims have indicated that there was no a medical records in this regard at that time. After identification of organizations responsible for collecting and organizing the information of victims worldwide and collection of their experiences and required data from literature, the essential parameters for the medical record in disaster was extracted from American and European models. According to national standards and conditions and in collaboration with Isfahan Disaster Management and Medical Emergency Center, the proper and final pattern of medical form for victims of disaster was designed based on two physical features and information elements. Medical record in disaster relief operations should be simple and useful, but currently used medical record in hospitals is not appropriate in this regard. The proposed model is a simple and proper form for documentation of victims and quick reference for accessing clinical, administrative and statistics information in disaster.