The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) recently released a new report, entitled, “National Ambulatory Medical Care: Terrorism Preparedness Among Office-Based Physicians, United States, 2003-2004,” which provides data that can be used to track progress in terrorism preparedness training curricula for health care professionals. For example, in 2003 to 2004, about 40 percent of physicians or their staffs received training in diagnosis and treatment of anthrax or smallpox, but less than one-third received training for chemical or radiological exposure, viral encephalitis, botulism, plague, hemorrhagic fever or tularemia. About 42 percent of physicians, 14 percent of nurses, and 9 percent of physician assistants and nurse practitioners working in physician offices received training on at least one of these terrorism-related conditions since September 11, 2001.
These data were collected as a special supplement to the 2003-2004 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). NAMCS is a survey of office-based physicians, their patients, and the health care services they deliver. Physicians were asked to describe training that they and their staff had received in the identification and treatment of terrorism-related illnesses. They were also asked where they would turn for diagnostic assistance and to whom they would report suspected terrorism-related conditions. State or local health officials, followed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were the most commonly cited resources to which physicians would turn for assistance, and were also the agencies to which physicians would report suspected conditions.
Readers may download a copy of this report at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad390.pdf
To download the data highlighted in this report, contact the NCHS Research Data Center at: www.cdc.gov/nchs/r&d/rdc.htm
