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Making Disaster Medicine Every Physician's Second Specialty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2013

Gilbert E. D’Alonzo Jr
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Abstract

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Keywords

health personnelphysiciansdisaster medicineAmerican Osteopathic Associationjournalism, medicalOsteopathy
Type
Editorials & Invited Commentary
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 108 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2010

I am proud to announce that through its publications, the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) is partnering with Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (DMPHP). Our mutual goals are to make disaster medicine every physician's second specialty and to ensure that all health care professionals adopt an integrated and holistic approach when responding to disasters. Osteopathic physicians, or DOs, are likely to quickly realize that the mission of DMPHP complements that of the AOA's own publications. Just as the AOA's flagship scientific publication, JAOA—The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association— is dedicated to publishing research and other scholarly contributions that explore the discipline of osteopathic medicine, DMPHP is dedicated to publishing articles on the discipline of preventing, preparing for, and responding to natural and man-made public health crises.

Conceived and tempered in disasters and other public health emergencies, the osteopathic medical profession has long recognized the vital obligations the entire medical community has to responding to public crises. The founder of osteopathic medicine, Dr Andrew Taylor Still, began searching for a new, more holistic way to practice medicine after watching 3 of this children die in a spinal meningitis epidemic in 1864.Reference Still1Reference Still2 During World War I, osteopathic medicine was tested on a national level for the first time as the “Spanish flu” pandemic hit the United States.Reference Smith3Reference Patterson4

Throughout the next 9 decades, osteopathic physicians were among the health professionals who responded to disasters and other public health crises. More recently, DOs have volunteered their services after such natural disasters as Hurricane Andrew in 1992Reference Bade5Reference Bade6Reference Bade7; the Northridge, California, earthquake, and the Piedmont, Alabama, tornado in 1994Reference Bouley8; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamiReference Greenwald9; and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Reference Sinco10Reference Sinco11Reference Greenwald12Reference Greenwald13Reference Greenwald14 DOs were among the first responders to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995.Reference Bouley15Reference Bouley16 On September 11, 2001, DOs rushed to Ground Zero in New York City and to the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, after the terrorist attacks.Reference Goetz and Vitucci17Reference Goetz18Reference Vitucci19Reference Goetz20Reference Goetz21Reference Vitucci22 In 2010, DOs and osteopathic medical students have been mobilizing to care for the victims of Haiti's earthquakes.Reference Wickless23Reference Sinco24

Despite our profession's long history of responding to disasters, osteopathic physicians face the same limitations as other health care professions do when called on to apply their everyday clinical skills to mass casualty situations without benefit of formal education in disaster medicine. AOA publications' official affiliation with DMPHP affords us the opportunity to empower DOs with resources to prepare them to respond to future disasters in a more disciplined, integrated, and effective way.

As of May 2009, the osteopathic medical profession has more than 67 000 physicians and nearly 17 000 medical students, all of whom could benefit from the affiliation between AOA publications and DMPHP.

Although the AOA Board of Trustees voted to formalize the affiliation just last year, DOs are already benefiting from it. Besides extending to AOA members the same DMPHP subscription rate that members of the American Medical Association enjoy, DMPHP encouraged DOs to tap its resources related to pandemic influenza so that they could prepare to treat patients for the latest H1N1 infections. These resources are especially valuable to osteopathic primary care physicians, who constitute approximately 60% of the osteopathic medical profession.

Similarly, following the Haiti earthquakes, DMPHP invited DOs to participate in its webinar for medical responders headed for Haiti, access its earthquake-related articles, and sign up for its roster of medical volunteers who wish to respond to disasters like the one in Haiti.

AOA publications are looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with DMPHP as we work together to encourage all health care professionals to consider disaster medicine to be their second specialty. We share the goal of preparing health care professionals to meet the needs of patients even under the most dire of circumstances. And we share the belief that when health care professionals respond to crises, they fulfill their highest calling and demonstrate the best that medicine has to offer.

Author's Disclosures: The author reports no conflicts of interest.

References

REFERENCES

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