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Veona Help Centre

Handle a Surge and Ambulance Pre-Alerts

A surge is a declared mass-casualty posture — a road traffic accident, a fire, a major incident — that tells the whole department to brace for a wave of patients. Declaring one flips the ED into surge mode at a chosen level. Alongside it, the ambulance pre-alert board lets crews radio ahead so the team knows what is coming — how many casualties, when, and how bad — before the doors even open.

Who / when: a clinical admin (or the senior clinician in charge) declares and stands down a surge; the ED nurse logs and works the inbound pre-alerts. We follow the team preparing for casualties from a multi-vehicle crash on the Lagos–Ibadan road.

  1. Clinical admin — open Emergency → Surge Mode. If there is no active surge, the “Declare A Surge” card is shown.
  2. Clinical admin — give the event a name (e.g. “Lagos-Ibadan RTA”), choose the level — standby, minor, major or critical — and the expected casualties, then “Declare Surge”. The department is now in surge posture.
  3. ED nurse — as crews radio in, “Log An Ambulance Pre-Alert”: the callsign, ETA in minutes, casualty count, mechanism (RTA / burn / collapse) and estimated acuity. Each one lands on the Inbound Pre-Alerts board.
  4. ED nurse — when a run arrives, press “Arrived” on its row (or “Cancel” if it is stood down). When the incident is over, the clinical admin presses “Stand Down” on the active surge.

What happens next

Section titled “What happens next”

With the surge declared and the inbound picture on the board, the team triages each arrival by ESI acuity as they come through the door, places them on the bed and zone board, and works them to disposition — the same flow as any day, just at volume.

Follow the trail

Section titled “Follow the trail”