Widespread trauma
It was a cool Marathon Monday in Boston and the on-site medical tents were keeping up with the stream of running-related strains, sprains, and dehydration cases that the event normally brings. Across town, in Boston’s Longwood section, Stephanie Kayden, senior physician in charge of the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a Harvard affiliate, and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), headed a team of about 50 that, in addition to handling the regular big-city emergency traffic, had been waiting for overflow and the more serious cases from the tents. “We thought we were going to be free and clear,” Kayden said. Then came the message that there had been a bombing. Kayden, the emergency department staff, and the hospital’s incident command team — already on alert because of the marathon — sprang into action, clearing out current patients, admitting those who couldn’t go home, and releasing those who...