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Chapter 27 - Mental Health in a Field Hospital

from Section 4 - Clinical Considerations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

Elhanan Bar-On
Affiliation:
The Israel Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
Kobi Peleg
Affiliation:
National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research, The Gertner Institute for Health Policy and Epidemiology and Tel-Aviv University, Disaster Medicine Department
Yitshak Kreiss
Affiliation:
Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
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Summary

Working in a field hospital after manmade or nature disasters is a demanding mission, known to cause various physical and mental bad outcomes, from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder. The mental health professional (MHP) is critical for every field hospital and humanitarian missions. At the immediate aftermath of the trauma, his or her main mission is to help the other teams to cope with the sights and difficult decision making and, in later stages, the role is enlarged to helping the coping of disaster casualties as well as community leaders. The MHP’s part starts prior to leaving for the mission, with building the team’s resiliency, and ends weeks after coming back from the mission making sure no personnel suffers from secondary traumatization. The demands from the MHP varies when the mission is in high resources country versus low ones, with its differences on the hospital teams condition, urgency, and mental and physical load. Yet, he or she would always have a place in working with the teams during working hours and in a daily closure (through a modified debriefing), liaisons, and actual patient’s treatment, and that should be his or her main mission in field hospital activity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Field Hospitals
A Comprehensive Guide to Preparation and Operation
, pp. 262 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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