CPES© - Instructions for Hospital Staff

(as contained within the Ward/Department Evacuation Logbook)

A brief explanation for hospital staff

The purpose of this Cruciform® Patient Evacuation System© is to ensure that, if an evacuation which has to take place, either a planned move from one location to another or an emergency move due to unforeseen events, such as fire or flood, proper records will be available to both despatching location and receiving location managers.

This will ensure that the managers of this despatching location can be confident that they know where all their patients have gone and that they can also trace any significant equipment sent with the patient. It will also ensure that those receiving the patients can have the fullest information to help them manage the patients’ health and other needs.

An audit trail of both people and items is necessary to track the event which caused the evacuation and to ensure that as much as possible has been done to minimise the effects on those who have had to be moved.

It will not be possible to accompany each patient from this location to the next with an individual escort. There may be several persons involved with the move of any individual. As a consequence, this simple system of identifying patients, their individual mobility and their basic condition, will help those escorts provide the patients with the best possible care and attention during transit.

The police will also need to be involved with any large movement of people, and this system will give them basic information on the patients, name and addresses, from where and to where moved, next of kin etc. No medical information will be given to the police, but the basic administrative information will enable any Casualty Bureau to track and trace any patient.

After the evacuation, whether planned or emergency, some form of inquiry is almost inevitable. The purpose of the inquiry will be to establish the reasons for the evacuation, what went right and, vitally, what went less well and what lessons could be learnt. The provision of the records from the Cruciform® Patient Evacuation System© (Cruciform® Evacuation Cards and Cruciform ® Patient Evacuation Log Books©) will considerably assist the inquiry to establish exactly what happened, what went right and what could have been done better. As such, the records provided by this system might prove invaluable.

Note

It is assumed that wards or departments will be able to evacuate all patients using one of the three categories of RED, YELLOW or GREEN.

If any ward or department has more than 20 patients, normally, they must have more than one “Cruciform”® Evacuation System© box in their ward/department, prior to any incident, as part of their routine preparations for such an event. Staff must all have had training in evacuating patients as part of their professional development.

Each Cruciform® Patient Evacuation System© box can cater for up to 20 patients.

Instructions for use of Cruciform® Patient Evacuation Card© and Cruciform® Patient Evacuation Log Book©

  1. Ensure your personal safety is maintained
  2. Ensure all patients are “tagged” with the “Cruciform”® Patient Evacuation Card© (the card).
  3. The Evacuation Officer should immediately nominate a member of staff to document the patient’s details onto the card and in the “Cruciform”® Patient Evacuation Log Book© (the log book).
  4. Pull elastic string out of “Cruciform” © sleeve holes, forming a loop. Place loop around patient’s neck or attach to clothing.
  5. In the case of maternity patients, mother and child are to be classed as two separate patients and both tagged with a different numbered card. (Each mother and child should have one of their numbered stickers attached to the other’s card sleeve to ensure linkage.) The child’s card elastic should be looped round a lower limb, if possible, or round the blanket wrapper. If appropriate, it could be attached to the incubator handle.
  6. Decide which dependency category any patient is in, Red, Yellow or Green (see category definitions on the card.
  7. Take one number sticker from the strip on the card and enter it into the first space inside the log book and also attach a number sticker to the bag(s) of possessions/medication/notes.
  8. Always replace “Cruciform” © card in protective plastic sleeve.
  9. Enter the patient’s name under the number sticker in the log book
  10. Put a clear X into each box which applies, across the two pages.
  11. Enter any known relative or other contact details in the space provided.
  12. Ensure that the front of the card identifies which mobility category the patient falls into and the destination this patient is to be moved to. The first destination will probably be the locally agreed Discharge Area, though Very Dependent patients (Red) may be moved directly to another hospital without going to the Discharge Area.
  13. Evacuation Officer - Print and sign your name at the far right as the responsible person. Repeat for each patient being evacuated from your area of responsibility.
  14. When all patients for whom you are responsible are tagged and moved to the first destination, fill in the summary page at the back of the log book. The Evacuation Officer in the ward/department should keep the top copy in the Ward/Department unless there are extenuating circumstances which prevent this.
  15. Ensure that the “Cruciform”® Patient Evacuation Log Book© is sent to the Incident Control Centre for the hospital, or take it personally, and make yourself available for further duties.