Organizations serving the public should have a well-defined disaster management plan, which ensures potential disasters are identified and countered before they happen. Structuring the emergency services effectively ensures that the consequences of disasters are duly minimized, and people who would be planning to attack a given facility draws back. According to Kim (2014), organizations such as hospitals should ensure that collaboration of all departments should be highly acknowledged since emergency control department cannot singularly handle disasters in the entire hospital without reinforcement from other departments. It is, therefore, important that every stakeholder or employee in the hospital be taken through various disaster exercises and training that will improve emergency preparedness among the employees (Kim, 2014). Communication and coordination problems should also be duly identified and addressed to ensure the flow of information is smooth. A response to the case study regarding preparedness to disasters addressed in Gary Evans’ article “Boston Strong: Raising a Voice against Hospital Violence” that featured in the January 2017 Journal of Hospital Employees Health release is therefore critical in this context.
According to Evans, there was an armed man who walked into Parrish Hospital up to the third floor and unfortunately managed to shoot an employee and a patient. Though, the man was detained in the room by employee’s fast response, if effective security measures or else disaster preparedness had been a priority for the hospital, the man could not have made it inside the hospital. Evans, further synthesizing the incident in comparison to other hospitals states that, hospitals such as Boston Medical have developed administrative precautions as a system where employees are required to report patients or family members to the patients appearing to cause a potentially dangerous situation. Furthermore, The Joint Commission has taken a further step of developing a violence prevention program that aids in bringing light to workplace violence.
Measures mentioned by Evans are crucial in disaster management, but more instant measures need to be effected. According to Kim (2014), it is imperative that organizations be adequately prepared against impending disasters by ensuring that they are equipped with the necessary tools and skills to handle such incidences. Among the required facilities include CCTV cameras, gates fitted with metal detectors as well as a highly trained security team and disaster management team (Kim, 2014). For hospitals where the flow of people is high, handheld metal detectors will not be as effective as doors fitted with metal detectors. This way, people with weapons will not be able to enter the facilities. Furthermore, CCTV cameras which are duly monitored will ensure that suspicious people are identified and questioned.
References
Kim, H. (2014). Learning from UK disaster exercises: policy implications for effective emergency preparedness. Disasters, 38(4), 846-857. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/disa.12084
