Monday, October 5, 2009

Late Night Musings

Ever wonder what the highly-trained, professional life savers of a busy ER do during the wee hours of a rare slow night?

Well, while others may be planning for pandemic flu or some other looming public health threat, we in the ER focus on a more pressing yet under-studied issue of disaster preparedness. 

Zombies.

That's right, those cannibalistic, brain-hungry undead drones who might at any moment rise up against us.  Swine flu?  Get a mask, wash your hands.  But zombies?  Bet your hospital doesn't have a incident plan for that.

Starting around 0230 the other night, the whole ED staff from attending to tech grew embroiled in a heated debate about best practices for a potential zombie apocalypse.  How could we ensure the physical security of the department?  How long could we live off the hospital turkey sandwiches?  Would a laryngoscope prove an effective close range weapon against a recently-deceased patient lusting for your brain?

While a summary of our findings probably won't make its way into the Annals of Emergency Medicine anytime soon, rest assured that the committed professionals of the emergency department are working 24/7 to keep you safe.

5 comments:

Ladyk73 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ladyk73 said...

http://chalkboard.blogs.gainesville.com/files/2009/10/zombieplan.pdf

Second Shift said...

Ha! Glad to see others are taking steps to address this important issue!

Doc1490 said...

I don't know about your ED, but come nighttime, it's pretty hard to identify who's a zombie and who's one of our normal, lovely neighborhood patients/family members/malingerers

Second Shift said...

That can definitely be a difficult distinction to make... occasionally for our staff as well!