• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Mac's Safety Space: Questions you can?t answer (right away) are the hallmark of a useful emergency exercise

Hospital Safety Connection, June 9, 2011

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Hospital Safety Connection!

The “best” result you can really expect from an emergency response exercise is the identification of questions or issues that you can’t immediately resolve. That’s where you find your real improvement opportunities and/or vulnerabilities. There will always be quick fixes, but to find a real process opportunity—that’s real gold.

A client of mine recently happened upon one of these opportunities. The general scenario was one that resulted in an influx of patients. One of the downstream events during the exercise was that the ICU was directed by Incident Command to plan for the admission of pediatric and other patients who wouldn’t be considered typical to the populations served in the ICU. In the course of the exercise, concerns were raised by the ICU staff regarding how this “shift” would be accounted for in hospital policy, what happens to existing policies for “normal” operations, and the recognition that staff caring for these patients do not necessarily have demonstrated competencies relative to the needs of these patient populations. This finally led to the question of the accountability/liability of the hospital and any individual practitioner responding to the immediate needs.

Read more at Mac’s Safety Space blog.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Hospital Safety Connection!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive