Preparedness Plus: Ready for the Unexpected

Dr. Fred Mullins

There’s a reason the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia is world-renown. It is being-prepared for the unexpected.

There’s good reason that the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia is world-renowned: It’s all about being prepared for the unexpected.

The Center is the largest hospital of its kind in America — 25 critical care and 34 intermediate beds, an on-site Advanced Wound Management Clinic, plus 11 specially trained physicians and 250 nurses and support staff — all tending patients with injuries from mild to severe. The strategy is preparation.

In February 2008, when word came in about an explosion at the Port Wentworth sugar refinery and fire near Savannah, the staff went into action.

“We hoped for the best,” said Fred Mullins, MD, director of the Still Burn Center Medical, “but were prepared for the worst.”

Additional physicians and nurses were put on stand-by. Stockpiles of medicine and dressing materials were rushed in. To free up beds, current patients were transferred to neighboring hospitals. Communications with EMS (emergency management system) teams and disaster-area hospitals provided constant, real-time information.

Dr. Mullins and his team flew directly to the refinery site to conduct patient assessments and arranged an air transport schedule with five different helicopter services to ferry twenty severely injured patients back to Augusta.

But, there were realistic challenges, such as the capacity of mobile phone batteries. “Mobile phones served as our primary communications network,” Dr. Mullins explained. “However, many of us drained our batteries quickly, and didn’t have chargers or extra batteries on hand. We also ran low on oxygen tanks faster than we expected. Fortunately, area hospitals re-supplied us.”

”You can bet those components are now part of our plan going forward,” Dr. Mullins observes today.

Another significant part of the emergency plan included ongoing support for victims’ families as they traveled to Augusta for short- and long-term stays. The non-profit Southeastern Firefighters Burn Foundation, also based in Augusta, provided a variety of services, including temporary housing, meals, gasoline for vehicle and restaurant voucher cards, volunteer resource management and a centralized family retreat two blocks from the burn center.

“The (Augusta) community stepped up to help,” said Jerry Woods, foundation president and CEO. “We could handle about 33 people in our retreat, but that wasn’t sufficient in this case. Augusta State University came to our rescue with student apartment space that allowed families to stay together.”

Both Dr. Mullins and Woods agree that Imperial Sugar also stepped up – and well beyond — to provide immediate and ongoing support for victims and their families. ”They felt it was the right thing to do,” Woods said. “Thanks to them, we could keep victims’ families together, which allowed them to talk, laugh, cry and pray together, creating a healing, peer-to-peer environment.”

Imperial’s dedication to affected employees and their families went well beyond just picking up costs for emergency services. The company provided on-site people at the hospital for months to meet physical, emotional and insurance benefits needs, including professional care counselors. It found long-term housing for extended stay families and provided them with telephone and gas cards.

Company representatives organized holiday events for children and parents. They provided weekly rides for family members and employees to visit patients, and scheduled weekly church services (led by employee ministers) in the hospital. They even took family members shopping for clothing, groceries and other necessities.

Imperial Sugar’s company nurse made regular visits to the hospital to monitor elderly parents of employees and accessed intensive care staff for patient status. The nurse then clearly explained to family members what was happening. When patients returned home, they found that the company also had provided for at-home special care needs.

By October 2008 — eight months after the tragedy — the last patients were discharged. Ongoing upgrades at the Foundation’s retreat, including expansion to handle more than 50 people, plus new interior design enhancements for a warmer family feel, all resulted from after-action reviews to improve service.

Dr. Mullins is getting the word out among his peers about the value of constant process improvement. He has shared what his burn center learned from the experience while speaking at The Southern Medial Association Regional Burn Conference in Richmond, Virginia, as well as at the Joseph M. Still Annual Burn Symposium held in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Detailed planning, greater collaboration and community engagement were three of our most important learning takeaways,” said Dr. Mullins.

“We had all the ingredients in place during this situation, and just needed tweaking to work more effectively. With these incremental improvements, we can exceed the expectations Dr. Still created when he envisioned this facility (in 1978 to become one of the world’s leading facilities for treatment of burn victims).”

To learn more about the Joseph M. Still Burn Center, click here.