Question

Disaster Nursing

This is an excellent website where you can read more about the role of a nurse in disasters.

Please read the article and report findings to us

Answer 1

Disaster nursing: Disasters are events that either natural or human made, and are inevitable. Disasters are events that have been occurring for a long time, throughout communities. In such situations, it is important that a person would respond to a disaster in the most appropriate manner along with attempting to recover from the disaster. Important aspects of disaster management are prevention of the management cycle, response, as well as recovery. The nurse plays distinct roles in each of the different phases of disaster management.

Roles of nurses in the different phases of disaster management are –

Prevention (Mitigation and prevention): Nurse would be involved in a number of primary prevention strategies. These include identification of environmental hazards along with serving the public for the purposes of migration.

Preparedness: Public health nurses help in disaster preparedness by accomplishing various elements of professional preparedness and personal preparedness first. Nurses would be ready to respond in a quick manner.

Response: The nurse responds by assessing the situations where she would be using the population based triage for assessment of communicable diseases. Surveillance is used in order to divide the population which is effected and is vaccinated for a life saving treatment.

Recovery: The role of the nurse is multifold and the connection of the nurse to community would be important in the recovery process. The nurse requires being flexible in the recovery process. There has to be awareness displayed by the nurses along with responding with vector control programs, sanitation system, water as well as food system along with mental health care.

Reference:

S Achora, JK Kamanyire, Disaster Preparedness: Need for inclusion in undergraduate nursing education, Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal 16 (1), e15

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4746037/

International Council of Nurses and World Health Organization Western Pacific Region. ICN Framework of Disaster Nursing Competencies. Retrieved From:www.wpro.who.int/hrh/documents/icn_framework.pdf Accessed: Jul 2015.

Chapman K, Arbon P. Are nurses ready? Disaster preparedness in the acute setting. Australas Emerg Nurs J. 2008;1: 135–44. doi: 10.1016/j.aenj.2008.04.002.