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Informing decisions on the purchase of equipment used by health services in response to incidents involving hazardous materials.

ABSTRACT: Accidents involving release of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances may prompt the need to decontaminate exposed casualties prior to further medical treatment. Health service workers who carry out decontamination procedures wear protective suits to avoid direct contact with contaminants. We developed an analytical framework based on queueing theory to inform UK Department of Health's decisions on the stock of protective suits that ambulance services and hospitals with emergency departments in England should hold. Our aim was to ensure that such allocation gave an accepted degree of resilience to locally identified hazards. Here we give an overview of our work and describe how we incorporated information in the public domain about local hazards with expert opinion about the patterns of demand for decontamination associated with different types of incident. We also give an account of how we worked with decision makers to inform national guidance on this topic.

SUBMITTER: Grieco L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7707622 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Informing decisions on the purchase of equipment used by health services in response to incidents involving hazardous materials.

Grieco Luca L Gleed Hazel H Groves Stephen S Dyer Simon S Utley Martin M

International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR 20180601

Accidents involving release of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances may prompt the need to decontaminate exposed casualties prior to further medical treatment. Health service workers who carry out decontamination procedures wear protective suits to avoid direct contact with contaminants. We developed an analytical framework based on queueing theory to inform UK Department of Health's decisions on the stock of protective suits that ambulance services and hospitals with emergen ...[more]

PMID: 33304805

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Project description:BackgroundTo improve the information for and preparation of citizens at risk to hazardous material transport accidents, a first important step is to determine how different characteristics of hazardous material transport accidents will influence citizens' protective behaviour. However, quantitative studies investigating citizens' protective behaviour in case of hazardous material transport accidents are scarce.MethodsA discrete choice experiment was conducted among subjects (19-64 years) living in the direct vicinity of a large waterway. Scenarios were described by three transport accident characteristics: odour perception, smoke/vapour perception, and the proportion of people in the environment that were leaving at their own discretion. Subjects were asked to consider each scenario as realistic and to choose the alternative that was most appealing to them: staying, seeking shelter, or escaping. A panel error component model was used to quantify how different transport accident characteristics influenced subjects' protective behaviour.ResultsThe response was 44% (881/1,994). The predicted probability that a subject would stay ranged from 1% in case of a severe looking accident till 62% in case of a mild looking accident. All three transport accident characteristics proved to influence protective behaviour. Particularly a perception of strong ammonia or mercaptan odours and visible smoke/vapour close to citizens had the strongest positive influence on escaping. In general, 'escaping' was more preferred than 'seeking shelter', although stated preference heterogeneity among subjects for these protective behaviour options was substantial. Males were less willing to seek shelter than females, whereas elderly people were more willing to escape than younger people.ConclusionVarious characteristics of transport accident involving hazardous materials influence subjects' protective behaviour. The preference heterogeneity shows that information needs to be targeted differently depending on gender and age to prepare citizens properly.

Dataset Information

Informing decisions on the purchase of equipment used by health services in response to incidents involving hazardous materials.

Publications

Informing decisions on the purchase of equipment used by health services in response to incidents involving hazardous materials.

Similar Datasets

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