UK hospitals are poorly prepared to cope with a "major incident," such as an act of terrorism, say doctors in Emergency Medicine Journal.
Prompted by the events of July 7 2005, in which 52 people lost their lives following acts of terrorism on public transport in London, the authors set out to discover if emergency care departments across the country were any better prepared than in 1996, when they were last surveyed and found severely wanting.
For the current survey the authors telephoned 179 senior doctors working in anaesthesia, emergency care, general surgery, trauma, and orthopaedics in 34 UK hospitals, to ascertain their readiness to respond to a major incident.
In all, they obtained 144 responses. Almost half of the respondents (47%) had not read any of their particular hospital's major incident plan.
And only just over half of the doctors (54%) were clear about the specific role they would have, should any major incident occur.
The authors then contacted the major incident coordinators in each of the hospitals represented in the survey. Only 17 responses were obtained, a feat which the authors described as "remarkably difficult to achieve."
Their questioning revealed that the frequency and timeliness of dry runs of responses to potential major incidents varied widely.
Most of the hospitals (82%) had carried out a dry run within the past five years, but only around a third (35%) were planning to do so within the next 12 months, despite the need for regular rehearsals.