Why responding to disasters is more complicated now

Also: Treating seasonal allergies with exposure therapy; Boston Marathon medical volunteers responded to the bombings — then healed each other [View in browser](    [❤️]( April 11, 2023 Hi CommonHealth reader, This Saturday, we mark a somber anniversary: a decade since the Boston Marathon bombings. The attack near the race finish line killed three people and injured 281. Dozens of people were critically wounded and taken by ambulance to Boston hospitals. The response from medical professionals that day — who worked through their own fears and uncertainties to save lives — became a model for how to manage a disaster. Dr. Emily Miller, an attending physician in the emergency department at Massachusetts General Hospital, was working an afternoon shift on Marathon Monday 2013. "It was nothing short of amazing," Miller told me. "People were just flooding down here to help however they could. It was a controlled chaos." Boston hospitals have been trained to respond to mass casualty events for decades. Emergency management experts say that training paid off in the response to the bombings. But now, hospitals are more crowded and shorter-staffed. So, responding to a disaster is more complicated. Miller told me she thinks the public isn't fully aware that the health care system is so stressed that it sometimes feels like it’s on the brink of failure. "We're pushing, we're pushing, we're pushing," she said. "We're doing everything we can, and we're hanging in there. But it sort of feels like we're hanging on by our fingernails a lot of the time." I talked to several doctors and other experts about what they learned from the marathon bombings and how they prepare for potential emergencies today. They told me hospitals have to get creative to find space for surges of patients, now that health care facilities are so crowded on a regular basis. You can read my [full story here](. And please spend a few minutes with this profile of the [Boston Marathon medical volunteers]( who formed close bonds through their shared trauma. "We have to be there for each other," Emma Nelson, an orthopedic physical therapist, told my colleague, Martha Bebinger. "It’s difficult to put into words exactly what it means, but it means everything." We'll have more coverage this week on the remembrance of the marathon bombings, as well as this year's race. Listen on air, or visit [wbur.org]( for the latest. Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Senior Health Reporter [Follow]( Support the news  This Week's Must Reads [Massachusetts stocks up on disputed abortion pill]( Gov. Maura Healey also announced an order clarifying that state protections for abortion providers extend to medication abortions. [Read more.]( [Massachusetts stocks up on disputed abortion pill]( Gov. Maura Healey also announced an order clarifying that state protections for abortion providers extend to medication abortions. 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