SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Stanford University on Friday staged a disaster drill at its campus to test whether the drive-through method can be used to rapidly screen patients during an A/H1N1 flu pandemic, an exercise which is billed as the first of its kind in the United States.
The drill is designed to compare the actual time and outcomes of the standard walk-in approach to the novel drive-through method, under which patients come and get screened in their cars, similar to the way a fast food drive-through restaurant works.
About 25 volunteers participated in Friday's exercise as "patients" and medical personnel examined infants as well as adults, logging actual time it takes to administer various medical screening and treatment, local ABC7 television channel reported.
The exercise will also test the possibility of using cars as self-contained isolation units when patients are driving to seek medical help during a pandemic.
In addition, medical experts want to study whether vaccines can be administered during a drive-through scenario.
"The main idea is to avoid infection," Eric Weiss, medical director for disaster planning at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, said in a statement released before the exercise.
He noted that when SARS emerged in Toronto, Canada, five hospitals had to close because people with the illness came into emergency rooms and infected others as well as health care workers,
"We feel that this (drive-through) mechanism of screening and evaluating patients during a pandemic will be safer for both patients and healthcare providers and much faster than traditional methods," Weiss said.
Weiss and colleagues have teamed with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to design the exercise. Data of the exercise will be used to build a computer model to figure how many medical staff is needed to handle a large number of patients.
Federal health officials hope to incorporate results of the exercise into a protocol useful for all U.S. hospitals facing pandemic emergencies.
