ISE Welcomes Dr. Sheuwen Chuang on 9/20/17

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Resilient Performance: How One Hospital Dealt with a Mass Burn Casualty Event

Seminar by Dr. Sheuwen Chuang 

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CEO at Health Policy and Care Research Center

Associate Professor at School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017 from 4:00 – 5:00 pm

Smith Lab 1005, 174 W. 18th Avenue

The Formosa Fun Coast Dust Explosion (FFCDE) occurred around 20:30 on Saturday June 27 2015 at the Formosa Fun Coast Park in New Taipei City. Nearly 300 emergency vehicles were dispatched. Within 6 hours, 499 victims were delivered to 34 hospitals. Victims, average age of 23, wore flammable swimwear resulting in large total body surface area burns (TBSA, average 44 %; 281 people with TBSA > 40%, 41 people > 80%). The talk will focus on how one public hospital responded to the surge in patients from the FFCDE disaster.

This study applies resilience engineering concepts and cognitive systems engineering techniques for data analysis. Under overwhelming demand and uncertainty for the hospital that does not specialize in emergency burn cases, the study reveals how the hospital demonstrated resilient performance in dealing with difficulties over multiple dimensions, i.e. medical materials, ICU/general ward beds, personnel, and ED space. The talk will cover how clinical staff adapted to handle the patient surge.

 Dr. Sheuwen Chuang is CEO, Health Policy and Care Research Center, and Associate Professor, School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University. She also is part of the international Resilient Health Care Network which had its most recent meeting this summer in Vancouver. Dr. Chuang has been consultant for patient safety management and quality improvement in hospitals for more than 10 years.

She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering and Enterprise Information from Tunghai University, Taiwan. She was a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Medicine & Public Health, University of Newcastle, AU, which was funded by Endeavour Research Fellowship Awards from Australian Education International in 2008-2009.

She has been visiting the ISE department this summer working on applying Resilience Engineering to emergency medicine and other health care issues.