Getting Organized
The first step in natural disaster plan is organizing the human and physical resources required for doing the job. In preparing for the disaster, the hospital should have an emergency coordinator in place with the responsibility to develop a community disaster response plan. Natural disasters such as hurricanes and flooding cause adverse effects on the operations of a busy hospital considering the possible rise in injuries that increase demand for healthcare services. After a hurricane such as Irma or Harvey, the need for a healthcare facility to emphasize the needs of the affected population necessitates the use of a disaster plan. The problems arise from the fact there is a rise of a wave of medical needs from patients without adequate resources to cater for the services. Under such circumstances, there is always pushing of stress experienced by healthcare workers and patients beyond a limit. It is imperative to acknowledge that reducing the negative effects calls for the implementation of a disaster management plan with an objective of minimizing the adverse effects associated with hurricanes or floods (Janius et al., 2017). The disaster planning approach covers several elements such as staff reorganization, communicating to the community, and facilities for handling after disaster problem.
Reorganizing Staff
Organizing staff would include offering training and education to staff safety and establishment of core staff emergency response committee. There should also be a well-planned approach for making local arrangements among staff members. The hospital preparedness for a natural disaster calls for a need of creating successful access to backup healthcare providers such as senior employees and those on leave. In an event where a natural disaster occurs, there should be no employee on leave until the hospital completes the recovery process. As highlighted in the introductory part, in the vent of extreme disasters, the intensity of the patient care activities in the hospital may increase creating greater emergency demands in the departments than in the typical treatment facilities. As a result, hospitals need to have adequately prepared personnel trained to offer services to patients in the case of the occurrence of a natural disaster. A successful plan highlights the need for calling staff members even those on leave to aid needy patients. Most of the healthcare needs after the occurrence of natural disaster occur due to injuries and a healthcare facility has to employ more staff members who can handle casualties. Key staff members such as directors and mid-managers also step in during the occurrence of a disaster to ensure that there is less commotion due to increased demand for healthcare facilities (Scrymgeour et al., 2016). Walking through a disaster management plan and having drills in a hospital increases the ability of staff to reduce the adverse effects that would affect the operations of the hospital.
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Establishing Emergency Communication Systems
The key aspect of natural disaster preparedness in the hospital is the focus on ensuring that patients, community members, and staff are aware of the occurrence of the disaster thus increasing their safety. This objective can be achieved by establishing successful communication systems such as community health campaign, emails, telephone trees, and distribution voice email. Text patient information or communication back up in case of an emergency includes texting or emailing the patients or staff members. The effectiveness of the communication channel determines the ability of the hospital facility to secure and serve the interests of both patients and staff (Veenema et al., 2016). Security measures and supplies needed in the case of natural disaster are always in storage because the event can destruct the modes of local transportation and hinder the patient’s ability to travel to the hospitals. Telehealth options should also be in place to ensure that all the patients in the community are capable of reaching the hospital should they require treatment. Having this facility operating during a disaster plays an essential role in preventing and reducing fears and risks that may affect patients. In the event that a hospital facility is affected by poor communication, the entire process of managing a natural disaster is rendered ineffective and the emergency response operations end up being chaotic, disorganized and confusing ( Veenema, 2018) .
Increasing the Number of Ventilators in the Hospital
In situations where flooding occurs, it is evident that there will be the presence of many patients suffering from breathing problems. This problem calls for a need to create access to mechanical ventilators which would aid the affected patients. For instance, the St. Boniface General Hospital has sixty-two (62) mechanical ventilators designed to serve the interests of patients in the hospital. Though the ventilators appear to be sufficient to meet the demand of patients in typical days, it is undeniable that this number is significantly small in an event of a natural disaster. As a result, an effective disaster plan calls for the organization to step up and increase the number of mechanical ventilators within its vicinity so as to meet the potential increase in demand in an event of a natural disaster. In addition, there might be the need to transfer some patients to other hospital facilities in the city in an attempt to save victims with breathing issues. To meet the characteristics of a successful disaster management approach, the number of mechanical ventilators should be proportional to the number of beds available in the hospital and staff.
Identification of the Kind of Diseases to Be Treated
Highlighting the kind of services offered in the hospital and communicating this to the community creates awareness and enhances the possibility that in the event of a disaster, they will get treatment in the hospital. The hospital facility offers treatment to different types of patients. For instance, the hospital is capable of offering treatment to both children and adults with pediatric diseases thus increasing their ability to serve the interests of the patients. Availability of the facilities needed in offering such healthcare to patients creates an opportunity for people in the community to seek treatment for breathing problems acquired as a result of an occurrence of a natural disaster. The hospital also offers surgical operations to patients, medical ICUs, and dialysis surgical which may affect patients during the occurrence of natural disasters. Many people suffer from severe injuries; lose blood, and others go into a comma calling for a need of improved healthcare facilities to support such patients. Though the facilities are put in place, it is undeniable that the hospital management should ensure that the hospital provides adequate training for staff to offer care services to patients and security to equipment in the incident of a natural disaster.
Evacuation Planning
Though the hospital has several facilities capable of addressing the needs of patients during normal days, it is apparent that the availability of space in the facility is an issue in the eventuality of a natural disaster. As a result, there is a need for developing alternative approaches designed to evacuate some of the patients (Scrymgeour et al., 2016). The health sciences center facility in the hospital compound can accommodate the tertiary mix activities offered by the hospital. The primary objective of performing this activity is to ensure that patients, staff, and machine move to a safer place in case of a natural disaster. The evacuation process moves both the staff, equipment, specialized supplies together with the patients. As highlighted before, during the occurrence of flooding or any other natural disaster, the number of patients seeking healthcare services keeps on increasing. Therefore, the evacuation process should ensure that they facilitate an effective process of transferring extra equipment, staff, and specialized supplies to handle the augmenting demands of the expected patients. According to Rezaei and others (2018), for a successful evacuation process to materialize, security and communication mechanisms must be effective.
Building a Recovery Procedure
The occurrence of natural disaster causes several damages which need to be rectified after the event. For example, there is always damage to facilities and equipment within the hospital facility hence the need for repairs, relocating and or purchasing of other facilities. For instance, the first step should include compiling of an IT inventory system so that there can be an establishment of a consideration of all inventory required to fully recover from the impacts of the disaster (Janius et al., 2017). There is also a need for conducting a business impact analysis plan on each system. A natural disaster business plan is an event that is designed to ensure their evaluation of all inventory required in each system thus identifying the best approach for the affected system(s). Disaster recovery plans require that the organization have staff in place capable of bringing the facilities back to a level of normal functioning. If hospitals face a disaster associated with an infectious agent, the next wave can be reduced by the hospital commitment in creating a contingent committee to educate the community on the possible cause, effects, and treatments for such diseases. Alternatively, the hospital will have adequate facilities, equipment, and staff for handling such patients.
A natural disaster is unavoidable and there is a need for healthcare facilities to create a successful approach for minimizing the impacts of such events. For instance, an occurrence of flooding in a particular region increases the demand for healthcare services by patients with minimal sources of income. As a result, the hospital has to reorganize its staff and equipment to address the needs of patients they can accommodate. Due to the space problem, there may be a need for evacuation which involves facilities, equipment, staff, and patients. The evacuation process should cater to the needs of expected patients in the healthcare facility. After the disaster, the hospitals have to establish a contingency plan designed to help the organization recover from damages and relocation of facilities.
General Risk Management Considerations
In the event of a natural disaster, organizations responsible for offering healthcare services to the affected people are not only responsible for providing life-saving medical care but also expected to coordinate with other institutions such as government agencies and non-governmental organizations to protect the dignity of human life. The coordination and cooperation attributes within a healthcare setting are much imperative in the event of a natural disaster as they facilitate recovery and promote a risk-sensitive approach that leads to effective response ( Rezaeiet al., 2018 ). When disasters, there are several probable outcomes that healthcare providers ranging from the management teams to the subordinate staffs should clearly comprehend and effectively prepare to address them. For instance, disasters lead to severe injuries, trauma and have the potential to provide an avenue for an outbreak of diseases. Therefore, hospital facilities should be well-prepared and well-positioned to provide emergency care to the injured, the traumatized and those who are critically ill through a functioning intensive care unit ( Gao et al., 2018 ). Some of the emergency preparedness approaches include; having a functioning blood bank, a counseling department for the traumatized people and a fully equipped surgery department.
From the graphs, it is apparent that millions deaths in the US are caused by natural disasters. Although most of the deaths occur during the specific event, a significant number of people die after the natural disasters due to the injuries they sustain. To such people, hospital facilities can step up to prevent the deaths by enhancing the process of service delivery an attribute which can be improved by creating an effecting natural disasters management plan. It is quite impossible to prevent the occurrence of natural disasters but it is possible for hospital facilities to be prepared to counter the emergencies and the aftermath impacts. However, understanding that the occurrence of a disaster poses a great challenge to almost every healthcare facility in terms of preparedness, capacity and hospital infrastructure helps hospital management teams to plan extensively for any eventuality. The situation is worsened by the fact that natural disasters occur in different magnitudes and that the severity of one disaster may be different from the other ( Toner, 2017 ). To ensure that efficiency is enhanced in the process of developing a proactive natural disaster management plan, hospital facilities should work with all the stakeholders to improve emergency preparedness in terms of response, organization, communication and rescue operations. For instance, such facilities can organize and identify other places such as schools and churches to extent the process of care provision thus managing the issue of space and congestion when natural disasters strike.
Conclusion
As highlighted in the discussion, most hospitals may have the ability to prepare natural disaster management plans but lack the potential to facilitate and manage a program that equips their staff with the necessary skills to handle the effects of large-scale and detrimental disasters. It is therefore recommendable for hospital facilities to ensure that the disaster management plans they adopt address all the critical components of a crisis. The phases of crisis management include; facility risk assessment, hazard vulnerability analysis, effective communication, training of the staff to equip them with the skills to handle the extreme impacts of natural disasters, command and coordination or disaster responses and evacuation parameters as discussed above. The ability to build a recovery procedure helps healthcare facilities to manage restore its operations to normal functioning after a disaster besides creating an avenue for managing similar eventualities in the future.
References
Gao, L., Wu, Q., Li, Y., Ding, D., Hao, Y., Cui, Y., ... & Ning, N. (2018). How Prepared Are Hospitals’ Emergency Management Capacity? Factors Influencing Efficiency of Disaster Rescue. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 12(2), 176-183.
Janius, R., Abdan, K., & Zulkaflli, Z. A. (2017). Development of a disaster action plan for hospitals in Malaysia pertaining to critical engineering infrastructure risk analysis. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 21, 168-175.
Rezaei, F., Maracy, M. R., Yarmohammadian, M. H., & Sheikhbardsiri, H. (2018). Hospitals preparedness using WHO guideline: A systematic review and meta-analysis. 25(4), 211- 222.
Scrymgeour, G. C., Smith, L., & Paton, D. (2016). Exploring the demands on nurses working in health care facilities during a large-scale natural disaster: often an invisible role within a highly visible event. Sage Open, 6(2), 2158244016655587.
Toner E. (2017). Healthcare Preparedness: Saving Lives. Health security, 15(1), 8–11. doi:10.1089/hs.2016.0090
Veenema, T. G. (Ed.). (2018). Disaster nursing and emergency preparedness. Springer Publishing Company.
Veenema, T. G., Losinski, S. L. A., & Hilmi, L. M. (2016). Increasing emergency preparedness. AJN The American Journal of Nursing, 116(1), 49-53.
