---

It is unfortunate that though India is doing well on so many fronts, we don't seem to have answers to the seemingly perennial problem of mass casualties, be it from natural calamities, accidents or insane terror plots....

Though on the surface we seem to cope, is there a system of dealing with mass casualties. Does your hospital have a policy? Are doctors/nurses/paramedics trained to deal with such an event?

---

oh i agree with that statement. problem is that govt. hosps are generally the first responders in such MCIs and they do not have solid contingency plans.
When i was working at apollo we had a properly drafted MCI plan. Not only that but we had about 3 drills in 2 years to put those plans into action and the debrief showed our drawbacks every single time. there was always room to improve. then we took it big when we did the MCI drill for the hyderabad airport. it was unique in the sense it involved the 2 major govt. hosps, the fire and the police agencies along with the airport management, and apollo coordinated all that. it was a great experience conducting that drill.
personally though i feel that there needs to be a great deal more to be done in that respect.
we had some training under the NDPCH national disaster preparedness course for hospitals, done by the national academy of traumatology based in gujarat. its a great course that brings in as instructors some of the best in the world. we had the honour of training with Col. Tim Hodgetts of the british army... i believe we need to do this more often.
Hopefully with the impetus being given to the no. 108 as the national 911 for emergencies, and the way in which this program is moving forward paramedics will also get a fair bit of training for managing the same.
my only problem is that the management level people the top brass of the govt. do not have the adequate training to do the same. and thats where the hammer needs to fall.