Disaster Medicine is a broad and dynamic field that encompasses the medical and surgical response to mass casualty incidents including rail, air and road traffic accidents, domestic terrorism, and pandemic outbreaks, as well as the global issues of conflict and natural catastrophe.
With conflict and catastrophe never far from today's news, Disaster Medicine is growing in importance for all medics at home as well as abroad.
Making Sense of Disaster Medicine is essential reading for all medical students and professionals who may find themselves responding to incidents on the scale of the July 2005 London bombings or the May 2008 Chinese earthquake.
Disaster medicine: Evolution of a specialty. The medical response to domestic terrorism and major incident management. Managing national mass casualty incidents. Classification of disasters. Pre- and post-deployment. Medicine in the field. Surgery in disasters. Psychological aspects of conflict and catastrophe. Marginalized groups in disasters. Healthcare in refugee populations. The realities of war. The hazards of the job. The ethics of Disaster Medicine. Electives in the developing world.
Dr James IDM Matheson MBBS, BA (Hons), Academic Foundation Programme, Royal Lancaster Infirmary, Catastrophes & Conflict Forum, Royal Society of Medicine, Faculty of Conflict & Catastrophe Medicine, Society of Apothecaries, London
Professor Alan Hawley, OBE QHP, Professor of Disaster Medicine, Professor of Disaster Studies and Director of the Disasters and Resilience Centre, University of Glamorgan