A health-care perspective on emergency planning and management
Drawing on a U.S. definition of public health preparedness planning (Nelson et al, 2007), and the U.K. NHS definition of a major incident (Department of Health, 2005), health emergency planning can be defined as: A coordinated, cyclical process of planning, implementation, evaluation and learning which aims to increase the capability of society to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from any occurrence which presents a serious threat to the health of the community, or disrupts the health care system, or causes (or is likely to cause) such numbers or types of casualties as to require special arrangements to be implemented by one or more health care organisations. At the start of the study, a conceptual model of health emergency planning was developed based on this definition and on a preliminary scan of the literature, which highlighted the importance of mismatched resources and demands (Dombrowsky, 1998), the nature of the hazard and the capacities of organisations and communities (Wisner et al, 2004), and various activities that need to be planned for and managed (Hodgkinson & Stewart, 1991; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). The model shows from an organisational perspective the key processes that are involved and the connections between them, and is represented schematically in Figure 1. An incident may increase demand for health care, or reduce its supply, or both. The increase in demand may have two aspects – the simple volume of patients, and also the nature of the health problems they present. Similarly, the supply of health care, which relies on a range of structures, processes and resources including human resources, facilities, organisation, equipment and supplies, has both quantitative and qualitative aspects. During a radiological incident, for example, the available staff may be unfamiliar with the symptoms of radiation poisoning and what the appropriate treatment procedures are. It is these quantitative and qualitative mismatches between demand and supply, which vary according to the nature of the incident and the vulnerability to it of the demand and supply systems, that can compromise the quality or efficiency of care. A variety of potential hazards need to be planned for. Health-care organisations have major roles to play in preventing, mitigating and responding to pandemic human disease, such as influenza. This is both the highest impact risk on the U.K. National Risk Register matrix (Cabinet Office, 2010) and also one of the most likely risks to occur. While demand increases, supply of health-care staff can also be reduced, most obviously because they are infected, but also for a variety of other reasons, including caring for children if schools are closed, caring for ill relatives and the impacts of the pandemic on public transport systems. It is characteristic of disasters that they reduce the supply of health care through their adverse effects on general infrastructure, so it is important that that business continuity plans are integrated into wider emergency plans. Similarly, loss of staff and supply chain planning are key components of pandemic flu planning. Nevertheless, business continuity issues usually occur in relation to relatively small-scale incidents. NHS emergency planners spend most of their time on such issues, yet the concept of business continuity planning is fairly new to the NHS, with the first mention being made in 2005 (Department of Health, 2005) and further interim advice provided in 2008 (Department of Health, 2008). Intelligence gathered from study interviewees, workshop participants and the networks of research team members suggests that formal, in-depth business impact analysis is not generally conducted by operational units within NHS organisations due to competing pressures on managers’ time and the lack of specialist support – in many organisations one person takes responsibility for both emergency planning and business continuity. Severe weather such as snow, extreme cold, heat waves and storms resulting in flooding can produce significant short- and long-term demand for health care, with, for example, flooding causing psychosocial health problems (Du et al, 2010), and heat waves leading to cases of sunburn, heat exhaustion, respiratory problems and other illnesses associated with the hot weather, such as food poisoning (Department of Health, 2010). But severe weather may as much affect the supply of health care through its effects on general infrastructure, again bringing it into the domain of business continuity planning. Further internally focused planning may also be required because existing NHS patients in both community and institutional settings are among groups vulnerable to adverse health impacts from severe weather. For example, large buildings such as hospitals may struggle to keep room temperatures down during heat waves and to prevent patients from becoming dehydrated. Such internally focused planning may be regarded as part of business continuity planning, but business continuity planning also needs to be outward looking, engaging external suppliers, for example. Terrorist attacks, while thankfully rare in the United Kingdom, can place massive short-term demands on ambulances and hospitals, and then a large task to provide follow-up psychological care. For example, the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London in 2005 resulted in 56 deaths, including the 4 suicide bombers, and over 700 injured within a single day, with blast injuries not commonly encountered by health-care staff. Major health-care incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) materials, whether from industrial accidents or acts of terrorism, are also relatively rare, but are likely to be difficult to manage, partly on account of that rarity, despite significant investment by the NHS in preparing for CBRN incidents. Although ambulance services and acute hospitals have protective and decontamination equipment, staff may lack the training to use them properly, for example. Finally, major transport accidents seldom require more than a local response, other than access to existing specialist regional trauma and burns injury centres, but significant additional demands can be placed on local ambulance services and hospitals, with follow-up psychosocial care being commonly required. In general, emergency planning aims to increase the resistance and resilience of health-care supply and demand systems by implementing measures to prevent incidents, and preparing systems to respond to and recover from the incidents that do occur. To achieve this, an emergency planning system needs to have structures, processes, resources and governance that enable it to develop suitable plans, and to implement those plans effectively. It also needs to be able to continuously improve plans through conducting regular exercises and drills and learning from them (Nelson et al, 2007). As disasters may occur when events contradict accepted assumptions (Turner & Pidgeon, 1997), a ‘double loop learning’ system (Argyris & Schön, 1996; Herzog, 2007) is needed. This conceptual model provides an overview of health emergency planning and helps to clarify the relationship between health-care emergency planning and business continuity planning. The understanding generated by developing the model informed subsequent data collection and analysis undertaken in the remainder of the study. For example, although reports of major incidents may give some insights into business continuity plans that may have been invoked as part of the response, unpublished internal reports also need to be accessed in order to provide a full picture. The concept of supply and demand systems highlights the need not just to focus on NHS organisations and their internal workings, but also to bring in external partner organisations and suppliers, and to go beyond organisations by taking a public health perspective that includes communities and their roles. Governance arrangements are also relevant, not only for emergency planning, but also for the health care and other systems that are involved, because they influence how organisations act. Consideration of learning processes is important, and not just for the purposes of identifying policy and practice issues and research gaps. It also provides a means of understanding how research can have an impact on the practice of emergency planning, which is crucial. There is little point in applied research that is subsequently ignored by practitioners!
A health-care perspective on emergency planning and managementDrawing on a U.S. definition of public health preparedness planning (Nelson et al, 2007), and the U.K. NHS definition of a major incident (Department of Health, 2005), health emergency planning can be defined as: A coordinated, cyclical process of planning, implementation, evaluation and learning which aims to increase the capability of society to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from any occurrence which presents a serious threat to the health of the community, or disrupts the health care system, or causes (or is likely to cause) such numbers or types of casualties as to require special arrangements to be implemented by one or more health care organisations. At the start of the study, a conceptual model of health emergency planning was developed based on this definition and on a preliminary scan of the literature, which highlighted the importance of mismatched resources and demands (Dombrowsky, 1998), the nature of the hazard and the capacities of organisations and communities (Wisner et al, 2004), and various activities that need to be planned for and managed (Hodgkinson & Stewart, 1991; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). The model shows from an organisational perspective the key processes that are involved and the connections between them, and is represented schematically in Figure 1. An incident may increase demand for health care, or reduce its supply, or both. The increase in demand may have two aspects – the simple volume of patients, and also the nature of the health problems they present. Similarly, the supply of health care, which relies on a range of structures, processes and resources including human resources, facilities, organisation, equipment and supplies, has both quantitative and qualitative aspects. During a radiological incident, for example, the available staff may be unfamiliar with the symptoms of radiation poisoning and what the appropriate treatment procedures are. It is these quantitative and qualitative mismatches between demand and supply, which vary according to the nature of the incident and the vulnerability to it of the demand and supply systems, that can compromise the quality or efficiency of care. A variety of potential hazards need to be planned for. Health-care organisations have major roles to play in preventing, mitigating and responding to pandemic human disease, such as influenza. This is both the highest impact risk on the U.K. National Risk Register matrix (Cabinet Office, 2010) and also one of the most likely risks to occur. While demand increases, supply of health-care staff can also be reduced, most obviously because they are infected, but also for a variety of other reasons, including caring for children if schools are closed, caring for ill relatives and the impacts of the pandemic on public transport systems. It is characteristic of disasters that they reduce the supply of health care through their adverse effects on general infrastructure, so it is important that that business continuity plans are integrated into wider emergency plans. Similarly, loss of staff and supply chain planning are key components of pandemic flu planning. Nevertheless, business continuity issues usually occur in relation to relatively small-scale incidents. NHS emergency planners spend most of their time on such issues, yet the concept of business continuity planning is fairly new to the NHS, with the first mention being made in 2005 (Department of Health, 2005) and further interim advice provided in 2008 (Department of Health, 2008). Intelligence gathered from study interviewees, workshop participants and the networks of research team members suggests that formal, in-depth business impact analysis is not generally conducted by operational units within NHS organisations due to competing pressures on managers’ time and the lack of specialist support – in many organisations one person takes responsibility for both emergency planning and business continuity. Severe weather such as snow, extreme cold, heat waves and storms resulting in flooding can produce significant short- and long-term demand for health care, with, for example, flooding causing psychosocial health problems (Du et al, 2010), and heat waves leading to cases of sunburn, heat exhaustion, respiratory problems and other illnesses associated with the hot weather, such as food poisoning (Department of Health, 2010). But severe weather may as much affect the supply of health care through its effects on general infrastructure, again bringing it into the domain of business continuity planning. Further internally focused planning may also be required because existing NHS patients in both community and institutional settings are among groups vulnerable to adverse health impacts from severe weather. For example, large buildings such as hospitals may struggle to keep room temperatures down during heat waves and to prevent patients from becoming dehydrated. Such internally focused planning may be regarded as part of business continuity planning, but business continuity planning also needs to be outward looking, engaging external suppliers, for example. Terrorist attacks, while thankfully rare in the United Kingdom, can place massive short-term demands on ambulances and hospitals, and then a large task to provide follow-up psychological care. For example, the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London in 2005 resulted in 56 deaths, including the 4 suicide bombers, and over 700 injured within a single day, with blast injuries not commonly encountered by health-care staff. Major health-care incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) materials, whether from industrial accidents or acts of terrorism, are also relatively rare, but are likely to be difficult to manage, partly on account of that rarity, despite significant investment by the NHS in preparing for CBRN incidents. Although ambulance services and acute hospitals have protective and decontamination equipment, staff may lack the training to use them properly, for example. Finally, major transport accidents seldom require more than a local response, other than access to existing specialist regional trauma and burns injury centres, but significant additional demands can be placed on local ambulance services and hospitals, with follow-up psychosocial care being commonly required. In general, emergency planning aims to increase the resistance and resilience of health-care supply and demand systems by implementing measures to prevent incidents, and preparing systems to respond to and recover from the incidents that do occur. To achieve this, an emergency planning system needs to have structures, processes, resources and governance that enable it to develop suitable plans, and to implement those plans effectively. It also needs to be able to continuously improve plans through conducting regular exercises and drills and learning from them (Nelson et al, 2007). As disasters may occur when events contradict accepted assumptions (Turner & Pidgeon, 1997), a ‘double loop learning’ system (Argyris & Schön, 1996; Herzog, 2007) is needed. This conceptual model provides an overview of health emergency planning and helps to clarify the relationship between health-care emergency planning and business continuity planning. The understanding generated by developing the model informed subsequent data collection and analysis undertaken in the remainder of the study. For example, although reports of major incidents may give some insights into business continuity plans that may have been invoked as part of the response, unpublished internal reports also need to be accessed in order to provide a full picture. The concept of supply and demand systems highlights the need not just to focus on NHS organisations and their internal workings, but also to bring in external partner organisations and suppliers, and to go beyond organisations by taking a public health perspective that includes communities and their roles. Governance arrangements are also relevant, not only for emergency planning, but also for the health care and other systems that are involved, because they influence how organisations act. Consideration of learning processes is important, and not just for the purposes of identifying policy and practice issues and research gaps. It also provides a means of understanding how research can have an impact on the practice of emergency planning, which is crucial. There is little point in applied research that is subsequently ignored by practitioners!
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