Fire evacuation s tandards

[clemmm78, RN]

Hi,

It's been a long time since I've posted but I have a question that I can't find answered and I'm hoping that someone here may have the answer.

If a long-term care facility needs to evacuate due to fire but not all residents can be evacuated right away, is there a standard as to how many staff members must remain on each unit/floor/per patient until help comes?

This is an important issue and we'd like to know if there are standards or if various facilities do their own thing when it comes to this.

Thanks for any information you can help with.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

Sounds like you are in a multi-story facility? I don't recall ever seeing any "nurse per patient" ratio in any regs. It is expected that the staff will not abandon any patients. If so, the most important factor is moving all patients horizontally to a place behind fire-rated doors then moving them vertically to the facility exit. In a multi-story facility, nurses should be trained in techniques to move non-ambulatory patients down a stairwell.

The general idea is to keep patients in a safe place until fire dept personnel arrive to help with difficult evacuation situations. Read your own facility's disaster response plan to get the details.

[clemmm78, RN]

Sounds like you are in a multi-story facility? I don't recall ever seeing any "nurse per patient" ratio in any regs. It is expected that the staff will not abandon any patients. If so, the most important factor is moving all patients horizontally to a place behind fire-rated doors then moving them vertically to the facility exit. In a multi-story facility, nurses should be trained in techniques to move non-ambulatory patients down a stairwell.

The general idea is to keep patients in a safe place until fire dept personnel arrive to help with difficult evacuation situations. Read your own facility's disaster response plan to get the details.

Thanks for your response. The thing is we are writing our disaster response plan, which is why I asked. We do know about moving them, however, sometimes, things can't be done as quickly as we'd like. Therefore, we were wondering if there was a specific standard.