Introduction
Emergency situations occur, and the community should be prepared to respond to such a crisis. It is of significance for healthcare institutions to have disaster recovery plans because these organizations bear primary responsibility for mitigating the adverse impacts of an emergency. Every hospital and individual department should have specific guidelines highlighting what behaviors and actions are expected to provide patients with adequate and timely care. The current accident recovery plan is designed for the Vila Health community that has recently witnessed a train derail, which resulted in a few causalities. This plan will rely on the MAP-IT framework to lessen health disparities and improve access to healthcare services.
Community Needs and Resources
The accident resulted in six casualties, with each of them having different health conditions. It is necessary to assess the patient’s needs to provide individuals with adequate and timely care. The ED is short-staffed, and some members do not have ED experience, which denotes that these healthcare providers should receive additional training. With this, one can state that the accident recovery plan does not need additional budgeting since the response relies on nurses’ knowledge and expertise. The ED staff is accountable for the plan implementation, while a Nurse Manager is responsible for its creation. Simultaneously, a novice Nurse, Registered Nurse, and ED Patient Care Technician are expected to follow the recommendations.
Healthy People Goals and Timeline
The current plan is aligned with the Healthy People 2020 goals and 2030 objectives. Among the 2020 goals, the focus is placed on reducing the time necessary for medical personnel to respond to a crisis (Healthy People.gov, n.d.b). Another essential aspect is to reduce the number of people who face delays in obtaining appropriate care (Healthy People.gov, n.d.a). As for the 2030 objectives, the first refers to increasing the number of training professionals who are ready to mitigate crisis outcomes (US Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.b). Simultaneously, the focus is on proving that older adults witness adequate care (US Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.a). It is also reasonable to state that the current plan implies that the recovery effort should be implemented immediately when the patients reach the ED.
Applying MAP-IT
Mobilize
The MAP-IT framework is implemented, and mobilization is the first step. Here, it is essential to establish a collation involving all the engaged healthcare professionals because a teamwork approach is needed to address the crisis (Caboral-Stevens et al., 2019). A significant task is to ensure that all the ED staff members know their roles and responsibilities in mitigating the accident consequences. The providers should know that they are expected to deliver care to patients according to the severity of the health conditions of the latter. Finally, it is of significance to highlight the importance of the plan so that the staff members are sufficiently motivated to follow the guidelines.
Assess
After the accident, the community needs to imply obtaining appropriate care for injuries that individuals have received. The individuals have different physical, emotional, cultural, and financial features, but the ED should only look and health conditions to provide adequate care. The SMART triage system seems appropriate because this approach shows a 90% accuracy (Bazyar, Farrokhi, Salari, et al., 2022). According to Bazyar, Farrokhi, and Khankeh (2019), the system classifies patients into four categories, including green (minor injuries), yellow (severe but non-life-threatening injuries), red (life-threatening injuries), and black (death is expected). According to this approach, the Mayor, immigrant, and older person belong to the green group; the homeless person is assigned a yellow tag; the mother-in-law is given the red priority; and the mother is assigned a black tag.
The SMART system promotes the equitable allocation of service because this approach only focuses on the patient’s health conditions. In other words, the allocation of tags does not consider a social status or personal attitude toward a person to decide on what care level they need. Contact tracing is not apparent here because this element is typically used to respond to infectious diseases, including COVID-19 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). However, it is still reasonable to collect contact information of immigrant and homeless persons. This step is essential to check whether the patients are not subject to long-term consequences.
Plan
The third step in the framework is to plan the intervention process. Firstly, it is necessary to highlight an objective that manifests itself in providing injured people with adequate care. Secondly, the interventions are versatile, including the arrest of hemorrhage, wound dressing, and surgery, and one should choose them according to a patient’s injury. Thirdly, the plan should have a specific target that refers to saving the patients’ lives and facilitating their recovery. These simple but essential steps demonstrate how the ED staff team overcome the crisis.
Implement
The implementation step implies following the plan that has been presented above. It has also been described that the staff members should understand and fulfill their individual requirements. In addition to providing the patients with care, the implementation process should also include a communication plan (Caboral-Stevens et al., 2019). Healthcare professionals need to maintain productive connections among themselves and with injured people because this approach can significantly affect the quality of care. The Healthy People 2020 goals are achieved because the plan prepares the ED staff to respond to a crisis and provides people with equitable access to care. Simultaneously, the Healthy People 2030 objectives are met since the plan is specifically developed to mitigate the consequences of a train accident while the older person’s needs are met.
Track
Data tracking is important since it helps measure efforts and progress over time. A suitable approach is to help a specific technological solution or partner with a health statistics center to delegate data tracking to a third-party organization (Healthy Peple.gov, n.d.c). It is essential to monitor data quality, limitations of self-reported data, and data validity since these features precisely demonstrate how effective the disaster recovery plan is (Healthy Peple.gov, n.d). As for the train accident, it is necessary to collect the patients’ personal details and contact information. This step is needed to reach these individuals over time and identify whether their health conditions are satisfactory after the crisis.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the presented accident recovery plan explains how the emergency department team can mitigate the crisis and satisfy the community’s needs. The MAP-IT framework has commented on five specific steps that should be completed to respond to the accident and provide the injured with adequate and appropriate care. However, one should understand that emergency department efforts deal with health outcomes, while additional processes are also needed. According to the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, appropriate utilities should settle the crisis consequences onsite (Rouhanizadeh et al., 2020). This two-fold approach to accident management ensures that individuals and families will live in a safer community.
References
Bazyar, J., Farrokhi, M., & Khankeh, H. (2019). Triage systems in mass casualty incidents and disasters: A review study with a worldwide approach. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 7(3), 482–494. Web.
Bazyar, J., Farrokhi, M., Salari, A., Safarpour, H., & Khankeh, H. R. (2022). Accuracy of triage systems in disasters and mass casualty incidents: A systematic review. Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine, 10(1), e32. Web.
Caboral-Stevens, M., Gee, M., Kachaturoff, M., & Wu, T. Y. (2019) MAP-IT in action: Developing a plan to improve the food systems frequented by Bangladeshi Americans living in Hamtramck, Michigan.International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 9(9), 350-355.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Contact tracing resources for health departments. Web.
Healthy People.gov. (n.d.a). Access to health services. Web.
Healthy People.gov. (n.d.b). Preparedness.Web.
Healthy People.gov. (n.d.c). Track. Web.
Rouhanizadeh, B., Kermanshachi, S., & Nipa, T. J. (2020). Exploratory analysis of barriers to effective post-disaster recovery.International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 50, 101735.
US Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.a). Older adults.
US Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.b). Emergency preparedness.