For a high volume hospital like the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) with 1,500 beds with an average capacity of 2,200 outpatients a day, bringing the patients to safety in times of disasters and emergencies is quite a challenge.
With that in mind, SPMC chief of hospital Dr. Leopoldo “Bong” Vega told Edge Davao that they are putting the safety of the patients as their utmost priority by employing the services of the hospital’s “building marshals” who are actually engineers in the vicinity of SPMC.
Vega said these marshals check at once for any reference for safety in times of earthquakes.
“If they say that there is a problem with the building and that is the time to do the evacuation, we will do the evacuation. Fortunately no major evacuation happened with the recent earthquakes. What is more important is there is a way handling to this kind of emergencies because if there is panic the patients especially newborn babies will be exposed to a lot of pathogens,” he said.
According to Vega, the first earthquake that struck some parts of Mindanao including Davao City last October 16 was a learning experience for SPMC prompting them to device a way in handling emergencies not just by evacuating the patients and that is by utilizing “building marshals”.
“In the first earthquake in October everybody panicked and that’s a normal response especially in emergencies and disasters like earthquakes. Everybody panicked even the nurses that they brought the patients with ventilators and all the stuff including the beds down in the ground area,” he said.
However, according to him this kind of response became a problem because it increases the chance of infection and it only expose the patients to newer pathogens.
“There is always the possibility also that there might be an accident like trying to pull the ventilator and dextrose and everything,” he said.
Vega cited that for watchers and for normal patients, they can easily do so because they have that kind of physical ability and they are not as debilitated like the patients in bed.
“From the first earthquake and the second earthquake we were able now to at least make proper way of evacuation meaning to say when earthquake comes we have the building marshals and together with emergency medical people they would inspect the buildings for any cracks or for any instability and once they checked that it is safe then nobody would be evacuated except for the ambulatory patients. If the building is checked and found sound and okay then there is no evacuation to do,” he said.
Vega also assured that after the latest earthquake, the buildings of SPMC were assessed safe not only by their engineers but also by the City Engineers Office.
“And there has no recommendations for buildings be condemned,” he said.
