Review your plans for EC.4.18, Joint Commission official says
Emergency Management Alert, July 8, 2008
Many of The Joint Commission’s revised emergency management standards continue to be challenging for hospitals, particularly those involving physical labor. That’s the word from George Mills, senior engineer at The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO), who spoke at the National Fire Protection Association’s World Safety Conference in Las Vegas in June.
For example, EC.4.18 mandates that facilities handle patient support and clinical activities during emergencies. Think about horizontal and vertical evacuations related to this requirement, Mills said. If your emergency operations plan touts that stair evacuations will be handled by two-man carry teams, have you tested that provision? “It’s a lot of work” for two people to carry a patient down a flight of stairs, Mills said.
Should mechanical ventilators stop working because of power, how will nurses keep ventilator patients alive? Plans may call for nurses to use Ambu bags to manually breath for patients. Determine how long a nurse could perform that action during an emergency response, Mills said.
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