Mass General First Responders on Boston Marathon Bombing

Staff and first responders at Massachusetts General Hospital share their experiences from the day and week of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013.
In order of appearance:
- Jeanette Ives Erickson: RN, DNP, FAAN, Senior VP for Patient Care and Chief Nurse
- Bonnie Michaelman, Dir., MGH Police & Security
- Christine M. Landry, RN: Nurse, Emergency Department
- Alasdair Conn, MD: Chief (emeritus), Emergency Medicine
- David Reisman: Senior Admin. Dir., Emergency Services & Emergency Preparedness
- Robert Seger: Exec. Dir., Emergency Services & Emergency Preparedness
- Ann L. Prestipino, Senior VP of Surgical and Anesthesia Services & Clinical Business Development
- Raymond Malcolm Smith: MD, Chief, Orthopaedic Trauma Service
- Jeremy Goverman, MD: Physician, Sumner Redstone Burn Center
- David Brown, MD: Chief, Department of Emergency Medicine
- David King, MD: Surgeon, Trauma, Emergency Surgery & Surgical Critical Care
- John Herman, MD: Associate Chief, Department of Psychiatry
- Peter Fagenholz, MD: Surgeon, Trauma, Emergency Surgery & Surgical Critical Care
- George Velmahos, MD: Chief, Trauma, Emergency Surgery & Surgical Critical Care
- Alice Gervasi, PhD, RN: Nurse Dir., Trauma & Emergency Surgery Service
Special thanks to Boston EMS, Pro EMS, The Boston Globe, WHDH-TV, and Rebecca Hildreth for your contributions.

[@ashleytremblay8580]

I spent 66 days at MGH after a car accident. Dr.Smith is the reason I have two feet today. Nothing in this world could show him how greatful I am. Amazing people doing amazing work!

[@jtc9935]

Ashley Tremblay Dr Smith did the same for me after my accident. Great surgeon and person...

[@prestonsmith9824]

Hello, Ashley! How are you doing? I hope you are fine and staying safe?

[@dansw58]

I don't think anything in this video really shows or demonstrates the kind of chaos a hospital has to endure when such a large scale mass of people all get hurt and need treatment. I'd like to see videos of these hundreds of people arriving there, see what the ER looked like and how staff was able to organize it and manage it all, see overheads of the parking lot and how many ambulances and such that it took to get all these people to treatment. How much personnel was had to be outside to help receive these victims. I don't think people will really understand the gravity of the situation without seeing it first hand, how much different it is from a normal day at the hospital.

[@optimine]

dansw58 They don't have that to show us because it doesn't exist. I have poured over footage and so far the best I've got is a very nonchalant few people being pushed into buildings.

[@HenryLeaf]

@@optimine When the hospitals become very busy noone stands around filming just to satisfy the paranoia of conspiracy nuts. They are busy saving lives. Notice the lack of logic in conspiracy nut thinking.. you think a huge medical treatment event at a hospital didn't happen because there wasn't an pre-organised media crew ready to document it at the hospitals (as if they knew what to expect) . In reality anyone with a camera phone would have put it away and HELPED victims. Perhaps you are projecting because what YOU may have done was ignore people's suffering, helped noone and filmed them voyeuristically. And the irony is that you guys think it suspicious that there were so many cameras and medics at the bomb site, despite it being an internationally famous and televised sports endurance event where people often collapse at the finish line ad need medical attention

[@optimine]

@@HenryLeaf The bottom line is the "Boston marathon bombing" was a simulation training exercise.

[@HenryLeaf]

@@optimine Obviously it wasn't. Many hundreds of people were involved and there would be zero reason for any of them not to disclose that it was a training exercise. That's totally delusional to suggest it was faked. Have you looked at ANY of the extensive medical documentation of the event or considered how the victim case documentation is used as case studies in teaching hospitals around the world!! Get a grip. Thousands of EMTs, surgeons, doctors anatomists etc study the Boston footage of victims and NONE of those experts see anything fake about it whatsoever. Ironic that the only people who think it must be fake are people with no knowledge of first aid, medicine or physiology who get their experience from computer games rather than real life.

[@E13v3N1]

@@optimine 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👀👀👀🧠🧠🧠

[@wolfpack7195]

Tourniquet High and tight, best thing you can do to a Major Limb Injury if you can't get the wounded to the Medical Facilities

[@usamarafieck1715]

You learn new things everyday.

[@jtc9935]

Boston Strong Forever

[@DisgruntledAdult]

Medical staff are Heroes

[@hmuphilly9129]

Did boston forget to thank the hospital personnel who worked tirelessly?
It wasnt just law enforcement or feds that should receive all the credit

[@henrihu1624]

Quay Baker, Nurse
Wubbels, Salt Lake
A grew up in N
Charles B at IBM screwed over n
Marion Smeets aka de .
Belgium

[@owensweetland342]

Hospital operated like a military unit.

[@hectorfive222]

John from 1

[@Northeastbaseball]

All the more reason why MGH Police need to armed.

[@azhunt]

How did Jeff Bauman survive loosing two legs after not being removed from the scene for over ten minutes?
Why was the woman on top of Jeff taken away before him and he didn't even get a stretcher?
Why didn't Jeff continue to bleed while he was being taken from the scene in a wheel chair?
This is all documented in videos and photographs. Please, please, help me to understand.

[@HenryLeaf]

Jeff went into vasoconstriction. Look it up. It's the natural response that mammals have to traumatic amputation that evolved to help our ancestors survive being bitten by other wild animals. The severed arteries retract up into the body and seal off rather than fountain blood like movie sfx. Having an intact leg with the femoral artery just slashed can be worse than having it severed as it can't retract and seal. It's common for people to get their mental images of what to expect in accidents and injuries from films and tv and computer games rather than real world experience with injury. Reality is usually VERY different to what people expect and not as spectacular. Most people drown because REAL drowning doesn't look or sound like people come to expect from watching noisy thrashing people in TV shows. Like how some folks have been led to believe cars explode on impact and people are sent flying through the air when hit by bullets.
Jeff had tourniquets applied by an emt and you can see these tourniquets around his thighs when travelling in the wheelchair. Tourniquets are not applied AT the wound site as many people think but ABOVE the wound where the limb is more intact and the tourniquet pressure can seal off arteries more effectively.
I gather you may have been watching nonsensical and ignorant videos by people like William Joseph Parks of Houston Texas aka plasmaburns who try to suggest the bombing was faked. It wasn't.

[@mikep3502]

Mgh police to me : "we are not a real police station". "We don't have to give you a copy of your police report you filed". One month earlier: "come down and speak to our investigators here at the police Dept".

[@nutritionfacts6429]

Mike Nasif that’s every police station.. they want less paperwork and discouraged people from putting report...lol.

[@sacareapyro6326]

just another boring documentary that doesn't show anything

[@Silly518]

🤓🤓🤓

[@bigpardner]

Liars all. Belong in prison for a long, long time for terrorism.

[@Northeastbaseball]

Shut up and get a life.

[@Northeastbaseball]