Nursing During a Disaster Starts With Education

Abstract

Future nurses, both entry level and advanced practice, are pivotal to the nation’s disaster response. They are critical frontline, acute, primary, and public health workers in the United States and internationally. To respond well, they must be taught how to prepare and intervene appropriately. This preparation is multidimensional and includes not only concrete knowledge but mental, emotional, and ethical preparation for the realities of working and providing care while affected by chaos. Training should be experiential and reflective and expose students to the interprofessional nature of disaster planning and response. New nurses, as they enter practice, as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, may also take on the role of a frontline disaster responder. The ability to effectively respond and access available resources to care for patients is required. Schools of nursing and nursing faculty increasingly will be required to include disaster preparedness as an integral part of the nursing curriculum.

Disaster Preparedness in Home Care

“…Home care agencies should seek to collaborate with formal support agencies at the local level to build relationships/coalitions and take part in community-wide training (Bell et al, 2021(Bell et al, , 2022Peterson et al, 2022). Attending communitylevel planning meetings could facilitate a better working knowledge of disaster planning in the community served (Anderson & Beach, 2022).…”

“…Staff educators play a role in ensuring readiness for disaster response. Annual education is necessary but insufficient for disaster preparedness (Anderson & Beach, 2022). Incorporating disaster drill exercises is essential to improve skill acquisition and confidence (Anderson & Beach, 2022; Bell et al, 2022).…”

“…Barriers to emergency preparedness include staff not being familiar with details of their agency disaster plan, disruptions to normal channels of communication caused by disasters (Bell et al, 2022), and a general lack of education about disaster planning (Anderson & Beach, 2022; Wyte-Lake et al, 2019). Home care leaders must be open to involving clinicians in the process and in helping them overcome barriers to implementing the disaster plan.…”

“…The first is to ensure home care providers and staff are familiar with the emergency/disaster plan and are aware of the agency's scope of responsibility during an emergency/disaster (Bell et al, 2021; Citarella, 2017). Leaders must ensure adequate time and resources are dedicated to continuing education activities that prepare home care providers for their roles during a disaster (Anderson & Beach, 2022; Peterson et al, 2022).…”

“…The literature focuses heavily on the preparedness and response phases and less on the clinician's role in the mitigation and recovery phases (Fletcher et al, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a need for ongoing training, education, research, and planning to mitigate negative consequences on healthcare providers, patients, and communities (Anderson & Beach, 2022; Bell et al, 2022; Elliott et al, 2023).…”