A major challenge for health services worldwide is in providing adequate medical care during mass disasters. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights this difficulty. Patient surge, a consequence of most types of disasters that contribute to trauma experiences, is a primary factor in disrupting such care as it is composed of worried well persons and those experiencing psychosocial trauma that can severely disrupt and overwhelm effective acute hospital based health care. We review the literature and propose a potential solution framework to reduce such a surge that relies on exploiting community social networks as first responders. We utilize and integrate literature based evidence on patient surge, community disaster behaviors and community based informal social networks to examine reasons for patient surge to hospitals. We then propose that leveraging community based social networks as a potent deterrent for non-critically injured, especially those who have experienced psychosocial trauma or the worried well, from seeking hospital care during ongoing disasters. By emphasizing the social capital inherent in community based social networks, this perspective posits an alternative cost-effective means of reducing patient surge.

全球卫生服务面临的一个主要挑战是在大规模灾难期间提供足够的医疗服务。持续的 COVID-19 大流行凸显了这一困难。患者激增是导致创伤经历的大多数类型灾难的结果，是破坏这种护理的主要因素，因为它由忧心忡忡的人和经历心理社会创伤的人组成，这些人可能会严重破坏和压倒有效的急性医院医疗保健。我们回顾了文献并提出了一个潜在的解决方案框架，以减少这种依赖于利用社区社交网络作为第一响应者的激增。我们利用和整合基于文献的关于患者激增、社区灾难行为和基于社区的非正式社交网络的证据来检查患者激增到医院的原因。然后，我们建议利用基于社区的社交网络作为非重伤者的有效威慑，特别是那些经历过心理社会创伤或忧心忡忡的人，在持续的灾难期间寻求医院护理。通过强调基于社区的社交网络中固有的社会资本，这种观点提出了一种减少患者激增的替代成本效益方法。