Are we prepared?

toomuchbaloney · Jan 18, 2015

Many hospital systems are not even close to being ready or prepared. They barely have enough supplies and professional staff to accommodate the mundane daily business that is expected by the administration. Preparation requires time, effort, and money.

NurseLatteDNP, MSN, DNP, RN · Jan 18, 2015

Our hospital has been undergoing expansions. During that time we have went several times without red/white plugs, elevators, air conditioning etc. It was all under controlled circumstances and we prepared for weeks for each event. However, each time a system went down we discovered something we didn't think about that we would need. Thankfully this provided real time learning experiences. And we have a great disaster preparedness department that works closely with the red cross. I'm confident we would manage to provide care to our best abilities.

amoLucia · Jan 21, 2015

I don't know if we'd be ready - as individuals or as the employee healthcare provider. I truly doubt it.

I've been watching some new TV series on the Weather Channel about a group of guys going out into the wilderness for a week of survivalist living. And there's those catastrophe shows where a meteor strike or supervolcano/earthquake wipes out half the world population.

So I got to thinking. What would life be if survivors had to rough it? Would I be able to go out and haul buckets of water from the nearby watering hole? By the way, where is the nearest watering hole? How about chopping down a tree for fire wood? Where's some forests that can be chopped down by all the survivors looking for kindling? What's for dinner? Time to go out and bag a bear, deer, wild pig, rabbit or squirrel? Here bunny, bunny. Here Porky, Porky, here Rocky, Rocky. And there would be a limit to tree bark, roots, and bugs.

Just hope that the smoke and aroma doesn't attract other scavenging survivors. We'll all be in the same boat since Wally World & Krogers will be cannibalized within hours of the calamity. It'd be every person for himself (and his family). Kind of like those zombie shows.

And what would happen if I have a 'hot' appendix? It has to be taken care of. I could survive a head cold for a while. And a broken limb would just leave a deformity with debility at worst. There's not any health care providers to help as they'd all be out there trying to provide for themselves and theirs.

Think about it. No electric so there's be no lights. Just up with the sun and down with the sun. No fuel (or electric) driven tools. No running water (back to trekking to the river).

I've really thought about those scenarios while watching TV. And when one thinks about the world's response after the Katrinas, ebola, San Andreas, they pale in face of Armageddon. There's only limited response at best. I fear the bigger the catastrophe will be the bigger lack of preparedness and I don't know that anything can be done about it too much.

Jenn MSEM,BSN · Jan 25, 2015

Preparedness for hospitals across the nation has seen great strides since 9-11, but there are still areas like special needs groups that need to have more resources and planning allocated for them such as pediatrics. This is from my capstone project " Pediatric Mass Casualty Planning "

"The critical infrastructure of the United States is insufficiently organized or prepared for the pediatric population(Barishansky, 2010).The critical infrastructure includes trauma centers and trauma systems for disaster management and a national disaster system that has the essential relationships with, the pre-hospital services, government bodies, police and fire, search and rescue services, health care resources, and public health agencies that are essential to disaster management (Frykberg, 2003)."