Published 16 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4268
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4268

News

Hospitals must plan for full evacuation, concludes review of fires

Jacqui Wise

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

All hospitals and healthcare facilities should have plans in place for a full evacuation, a review of five recent fires at London hospitals has concluded.

Most hospitals’ major incident plans do not include the possibility of a complete site evacuation, assuming that a partial or horizontal evacuation to another section of the building would be sufficient, says the report by NHS London.

The report is the first example of a published case series that analyses hospital evacuations in the United Kingdom. It was launched at a conference in London to mark international day for disaster reduction, which focused on the theme "Hospitals safe from disasters."

The report examined fires at five different types of hospital—the Royal Marsden Hospital, University College Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Northwick Park Hospital, and Chase Farm (a medium secure psychiatric unit). The fires occurred between 2 January 2008 and 11 February 2009. Four of the . . . [Full text of this article]


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