[Prehospital and In-hospital Concepts for Disaster Response and Preparedness]

Disaster medicine faces complex challenges and will play an increasing role in the future. Disaster medicine is dominated by a phased imbalance of available and required resources. Various factors, such as a possible hazard for the rescue forces, inaccessible terrain or even destroyed infrastructure increase the complexity enormously. For casualties, this can mean a concentration of medical care on life-threatening conditions. The primary goal of emergency planning is to ensure standard or contingency care and to avoid crisis care.Hospitals and the preclinical emergency organizations must prepare for possible major emergencies or disasters. Easy-to-understand and just as easy to apply emergency plans are an important prerequisite for successful emergency management. These plans can only be guiding structures; the adaptation to the actual circumstances of the incident and the situation-adapted interpretation of the plans is the responsibility of the operational commanders. A clear leadership structure is essential for both preclinical and clinical operations. In this article, we describe important basic principles of disaster medicine mission planning and management.