Top 12 mistakes in a hospital emergency preparedness plan
Your emergency preparedness plan should be concise and, above all else, practical. Avoid creating a voluminous plan that looks impressive but won’t be of much use when an emergency hits.
Too many emergency preparedness plans are long on procedure but short on critical information, says Cameron Bruce, CSP, PE, a health care consultant in Orinda, CA. The plan should focus on making crucial information available to the user, rather than spelling out in exhaustive detail exactly what policies and procedures apply.
"You don’t want 300 pages of cumbersome, tedious writing when you’re in a chaotic environment," he says. "When a crisis strikes, you need information, not somebody’s tome on the philosophy of crisis management."
Bruce says these are the top 12 weaknesses he sees in hospitals’ emergency preparedness plans:
- Not based on flexible incident command system
- Do not contain enough multidisciplinary input
- Do not consider enough probable scenarios, i.e., no hazard vulnerability analysis
- Lack essential response information, such as checklists, flowcharts, and data
- Lack overview of communications backup systems
- Do not contain adaptable forms for managing information
- Do not adequately address backup supplies — locations, amounts, and vendor agreements
- Have not undergone a review by local authorities
- Lack alarm points signaling that critical supplies are running low
- Do not include rapid troubleshooting tools for responding to problems such as water failure
- Have not undergone adequate drilling or testing of the plan and its components
- Have not undergone continuous improvement of the plan based on drill results.
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