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After the plane crash: Inside the command center with Stanford Hospital's chief of staff

Earlier today, we shared a video that provides a behind-the-scenes look at our emergency teams' response to Saturday's plane crash. Now, in a 1:2:1 podcast, Stanford's Ann Weinacker, MD, provides even more details from Saturday morning: how officials here mobilized to establish a command center and initiate code triage, bringing together cross-functional teams from emergency, trauma, operations, security and others to coordinate the expected surge of patients. Among the things Weinacker shares in this 26-minute interview is the sense of calm and organization she arrived to at the hospital, and the uncertainties she and her colleagues later felt as they waited for patients to arrive:

It concerned us that we didn't always knew who was coming or how many people were coming or what the extent of their injuries might be. We would get word that an ambulance was coming with several people or a bus was coming with 15 people... At one point we had heard what was being reported on the news, that there were 60 people unaccounted for; that of course caused a lot of anxiety for us in our minds. Are these people severely injured? Are they deceased? We didn't really know what the situation was or how many of those people we would be getting.

Weinacker is chief of staff at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and a professor of critical care medicine at the medical school.

Previously: Behind-the-scenes look at treating SFO plane-crash survivors and “Everyone came together right away:” How Stanford response teams treated SFO plane-crash victims

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