Enhancing disaster preparedness of specialty nurses on a national scale

Abstract

Purpose

The number of disasters has increased by 30 per cent worldwide in the past 30 years. Nurses constitute the largest clinical group within a hospital and their ability to respond to disasters is crucial to the provision of quality patient care. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a four-year disaster preparedness partnership between two tertiary hospitals from the perspective of executive staff, senior clinical managers and specialist nurses. The national disaster response centre was situated in one hospital and the other hospital was located 3,500 km away.

Design/methodology/approach

The intervention involved selected nurses working at the partner hospital to enable familiarisation with policies, procedures and layout in the event of a request for back-up in the event of a national disaster. A mixed-methods design was used to elicit the strengths and limitations of the partnership. Surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups were used.

Findings

In total, 67 participants provided evaluations including ten executive staff, 17 clinical management nurses and 38 nurses from the disaster response team. Improvements in some aspects of communication were recommended. The successful recruitment of highly skilled and committed nurses was a strength. A disaster exercise resulted in 79 per cent of nurses, able and willing to go immediately to the partner hospital for up to 14 days.

Research limitations/implications

During the four year partnership, no actual disaster occurred that required support. This limited the ability to fully trial the partnership in an authentic manner. The disaster exercise, although helpful in trialling the processes and assessing nurse availability, it has some limitations.

Originality/value

This innovative partnership successfully prepared specialist nurses from geographically distant hospitals for a disaster response. This together with a willingness to be deployed enhanced Australia’s capacity in the event of a disaster.

Citation

Mitchell, M.L., McKinnon, L., Aitken, L.M., Weber, S., Birgan, S. and Sykes, S. (2016), "Enhancing disaster preparedness of specialty nurses on a national scale", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 11-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2015-0026