5.3 Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
5.3 Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
Open Resources for Nursing (Open RN)
A disaster is defined as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability, and capacity that lead to human, material, economic, and environmental losses and impacts.[1] Every community must prepare to respond to disasters that include natural events (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, or disease outbreaks), man-made events (e.g., harmful chemical spills, mass shootings, or terrorist attacks), or infectious disease outbreaks. See Figure 18.2[2] for an image of the effects of the natural disaster Hurricane Katrina.
Emergency preparedness is the planning process focused on avoiding or reducing the risks and hazards resulting from a disaster to optimize population health and safety. Disaster management refers to the integration of emergency response plans throughout the life cycle of a disaster event. Because disasters cause physical and psychological effects in a community, emergency preparedness and disaster management emphasize collaboration and cooperative aid among health care institutions and community agencies to ensure a coordinated and effective response.[3]
Read the American Nurses Association resource regarding Disaster Preparedness.
Emergency preparedness and disaster management are based on four key concepts: preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. This process guides decision-making when an emergency or disaster occurs in a community.[4] After the disaster event has concluded, evaluation of the effectiveness of the response occurs as part of planning emergency preparedness. See Figure 18.3[5] for a diagram that illustrates this theoretical framework for emergency preparedness. Each of these concepts is further discussed in the following subsections.
Preparedness
Preparedness includes planning, training personnel, and providing educational activities regarding potential disastrous events. Planning includes evaluating environmental risks and social vulnerabilities of a community. Environmental risk refers to the probability and consequences of an unwanted accident in the environment in which community members live, work, or play. Risk assessment also includes assessing social vulnerabilities that affect community resilience.[6]
Social vulnerability refers to the characteristics of a person or a community that affect their capacity to anticipate, confront, repair, and recover from the effects of a disaster.[7] Populations living in a disaster-stricken area are not affected equally. Many factors can weaken community members’ ability to respond to disasters, including poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing. Evidence indicates that those living in poverty are more vulnerable at all stages of a catastrophic event, as are racial and ethnic minorities, children, elderly, and disabled people.