Abstract

Mass Casualty incidents overwhelm the capabilities of any health center. It is an event which is unexpected and disrupts the health services in a hospital. Hospitals usually establish protocols for mass casualty but how it would be managed in post-earthquake condition this study tried to investigate this. Disasters creates mass casualty and health services put under added pressure. Research should be conducted in prospective nature and investigation needed to explore how the health service providers are prepared and the existence of incident command system and triage protocol could be the decisive factor for saving maximum lives in post-earthquake situation. The objective of this research is to assess the existing post-earthquake mass casualty management by health facility personnel at different health facilities. A Mixed-method study designed for this study. Cross-sectional survey carried out on hospital staff and as qualitative method FGD, in-depth interviews were conducted upon different level of health service providers. Among the 150 respondents, 43% have emergency management training; only 31% respondent admitted that encountered experience in real situation which overwhelmed the hospitals and which also demanded more casualty management efficiently. The highest respondents (97%) told that basic surgical skill badly needed for after earthquake type of disaster. 50% emphasized for saving lives attitudes is the vital motivation for nursing care in emergencies. In qualitative investigation, most of the participants stressed on pre-hospital management and empowering local actors with necessary emergency training which will enable them to tackle post-earthquake mass casualty management. Qualitative methods explored that we badly need of volunteers for on-site triage and lessen the mass casualty and fatality for saving maximum life with maximum effort. In post-earthquake situation, there would be lot of disaster victims; so, we need to develop the establishment of a protocol and regular mass casualty drills to cope with future occurrences.