Question

Please answer in brief this is my 4th post please need apprpriate and detail answer with reference with any US example of health care.

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Research Emergency Preparedness in healthcare. Write a brief paper explaining why this is important and how it contributes to patient safety. Include examples of recent events that would reinforce your viewpoint. What challenges did these events bring to healthcare organizations?

Answer 1

ANSWER:

Emergency Preparedness:

IMPORTANCE AND CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS PATIENT SAFETY

Healthcare facilities and their staff play a key role in emergency preparedness and response efforts for all types of events, including natural or man-made disasters, pandemic outbreaks, or terrorist attacks.

Emergency preparedness is very important to survive in case of natural or man made disaster and can be defined as the organization and management of the resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies (preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery). The aim is to reduce the harmful effects of all hazards, including disasters.

Emergency preparedness efforts aim to reduce or avoid the potential losses from hazards, assure prompt and appropriate assistance to the victims of a disaster, and achieve a rapid and effective recovery. It is crucial that hospitals remain safe and functional during and after disasters. Health facilities at all levels deserve special attention in the case of natural disasters as they must continue the work of current patient treatment within their facilities and provide care for persons injured by the disaster event. Disaster management becomes even more important for hospitals as the health sector has been particularly vulnerable to the damage caused.

Emergency preparedness is significant as it can mitigate the effects; such efforts aim to reduce or avoid the potential losses from hazards, assure prompt and appropriate assistance to the victims of disaster, and achieve a rapid and effective recovery.

Health facilities, at all levels, deserve special attention in the case of natural disasters, as they must continue patient treatment and as well as care for those injured by the event . At any given time, hospitals have a population of patients, staff, visitors, and transient patients, but in a disaster event, the number may rapidly and substantially increase. The security and safety of all patients and occupants must be secured whilst continuing ongoing treatments and support services It is also important that promotion and prevention programs are not suspended, such as prenatal care and hemodialysis. As such, to ensure the continuity of service in the case of a natural disaster, a hospital must implement formal plans to deal with such difficult events.

It is crucial that hospitals remain safe and functional during and after disaster events, and it is recognized that hospitals at any size need high attention in the case of natural disasters, as they must continue patient treatment and provide care for persons injured by the event (Eybpoosh et al., 2011)

Hospitals are expected to be ready to play an essential role in reducing death and injury, and hospital readiness have been defined as the ability to effectively maintain hospital operations, sustain a medically safe environment, and adequately address the increased and potentially unexpected medical needs of the affected population.

For eg: California-Based Company Offers New Lifesaving Hospital Evacuation Technology
Officials associated with VectorCare, a healthcare logistics company based in Sausalito, CA, have reportedly developed a way for hospitals to quickly evacuate patients during a crisis and is making the new technology available to California hospitals and transport providers in preparation for another dangerous fire season.

Key components of the platform include hospital personnel having the ability to broadcast a single alert to every transport provider in the area, rather than individually calling each company, and accessibility from any web browser.

Another aspect of a comprehensive disaster plan is to consider all phases of the disaster management cycle.

An effective hospital emergency preparedness plan must be constructed in four stages of emergency management, which are: (1) mitigation, (2) preparedness, (3) response, and (4) recovery (Adini,and et al2003). Another example, the hurricanes of 2004 that struck Florida provide useful insights into what can go wrong even when such a type of event has been taken into account. Hurricane Charley, a weak Category 4 storm, made landfall in Charlotte County along the western coast of Florida. A regional medical centerlocated in the area sustained significant damage to its roof and windows, resulting in rainwater infiltrationinto patient rooms and other medical service areas. As the storm passed through the area, the hospital lostits main power, resulting in the activation of its emergency power generators. However, the generators onlyhad enough diesel fuel to keep the facility operating for 28 hours.

MAJOR CHALLANGES :

There are internal and external barriers that emergency preparedness must face. Some internal barriers for hospitals include; a lack of encouragement and motivation between hospital and management staff, a lack of a universal language between staff, the high cost of implementation of emergency equipment for incident events a lack of competitive atmosphere for the excellence and progress involvement of administrative managers in daily activities, also a lack of recognition amongst staff for the need for crisis management, as well as a lack of knowledge about dealing with natural disasters in hospitals amongst disaster managers.

Also there are some external barriers that disaster managers must face, such as a lack of commitment amongst managers and a lack of managers with sufficient authority to oversee the plan’s implementation, the absence of statutory requirements, the involvement of different decision making authorities, a lack of appropriate administrative culture for managing crises, weak communication and coordination of crisis teams, and the lack of an emergency incident command system in the country at a higher level.

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