Clinical Research Directory

Mass-Casualty Incident - Prehospital Emergency Response

The goal of this study was to learn whether the MCIPHER memory aid could help first-year resident doctors manage a simulated mass-casualty incident. MCIPHER organizes the response into five phases: command, triage, treatment, transport, and closure. Twenty-five postgraduate year-1 residents from emergency medicine, trauma surgery, general surgery, and anaesthesiology took part. All participants completed the same two-week course on mass-casualty incident response. Researchers then placed participants into one of two groups using a non-random method. The control group completed a three-dimensional tabletop simulation after the standard course. The MCIPHER group received an additional structured briefing on MCIPHER immediately before completing the same simulation. The main questions were: Did MCIPHER affect overall team performance? Did MCIPHER affect how quickly teams completed key actions? Did MCIPHER affect how accurately teams triaged simulated casualties? Researchers also measured participants' confidence, knowledge, attitudes, views of the debrief, and views of MCIPHER. Each team managed the same simulated incident involving 25 casualties. The exercise lasted about 60 minutes and was followed by a structured debrief lasting about 20 minutes.