WHAT PHYSICIANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BIOTERRORISM

Physicians are on the front lines of the battle to contain and, preferably, avoid bioterrorism events. The more you know about the threats facing us, the better equipped you'll be to react if an attack occurs near you.

Preparation is Half of the Battle

Whether we like it or not, as health care providers we are all on the front lines in the post 9/11 world. Physicians and RNs are focal points in their communities -- as such, your patients look to you for guidance, counseling, and assurance. These are the roles and expectations you are used to fulfilling. But now the community will also look to you for another type of leadership -- within your realm of influence, you are the medical field marshals of your hospital, city, or state.

The primary goals of the terrorist threats facing the United States and its allies are to destabilize our society and disrupt our way of life. You can counteract the terrorists' goals by taking action to eliminate, or at least minimize, the threats in your area. By educating yourself, your staff, and the support personnel associated with your department or practice, you will get a leg up on the threat.

The single biggest threat during a bioterror event is panic, which leads to the dissolution of the care systems that have been carefully erected to deal with outbreak contingencies. People panic when they feel overwhelmed by circumstances or are faced with traumatic events that are too foreign to their comprehension. Training programs and simulations are excellent ways to familiarize staff with the likely scenarios of a biological terrorist event, thus helping to reduce the sheer volume of new and destabilizing inputs bombarding your staff during what will inevitably be a traumatic and stressful time.

The CDC's Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response has assembled several pieces of training material, including PowerPoint presentations and corresponding instructors' guides that you can download from their website. Use these to kickstart your staff orientations about how you'll respond in the event of an attack in your area. You should also coordinate your training with the local fire, police, and sheriff's departments.

Get to Know Your Teammates

Follow up your classroom work with simulation training, preferably in conjunction with local fire crews and law enforcement, at a local park, school, or at the hospital itself. Interagency communication and coordination is typically the greatest obstacle to effectively dealing with a public health emergency, so get to know the people you'll need to communicate with in the event of a disaster. Figuring out the most effective channels of communication well in advance will help to make the community's response more effective and coordinated. Don't wait until an actual emergency to figure out whom to contact at the CDC, your state's Department of Public Health, and your local emergency response units.

Potential Agents of Bioterrorism