Tip of the week: Prepare for the unthinkable
Hospital Safety Connection, January 12, 2012
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As many emergency planners already know, The Joint Commission asks facilities to identify their top five disasters, based on factors like geographic location, and plan accordingly for those disasters. But for a comprehensive emergency preparedness program, emergency planners are often required to look outside their top five and consider disasters that have even a minimal chance of occurring, says Marge McFarlane, PhD, CHSP, HEM, MEP, CHEP, principle owner of Superior Performance, LLC, in Eau Claire, WI.
The best way to plan for unexpected disasters outside of your top five is to adopt an all-hazards approach to disaster management.
"It's not necessarily scenario-driven," McFarlane says. "You have a competent incident command structure, and you have interoperative communications with redundancy, meaning the landline is out, the cell phones are out, so you have your satellite and ham radios and your runners."
An all-hazards approach focuses on perfecting basic response systems.
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