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Disaster Preparedness: Helping You Be Prepared

The document discusses the importance of disaster preparedness for nurses and provides resources on different types of disasters and response. It emphasizes having a personal and family disaster plan and choosing a volunteer organization before a disaster occurs. It also highlights ANA's educational opportunities to help nurses and communities better prepare for and recover from disasters.

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eva maulidyah kusnaeni
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32 views3 pages

Disaster Preparedness: Helping You Be Prepared

The document discusses the importance of disaster preparedness for nurses and provides resources on different types of disasters and response. It emphasizes having a personal and family disaster plan and choosing a volunteer organization before a disaster occurs. It also highlights ANA's educational opportunities to help nurses and communities better prepare for and recover from disasters.

Uploaded by

eva maulidyah kusnaeni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Disaster Preparedness

Natural or man-made, disasters can be scary, chaotic, and tragic events. ANA is helping to
ensure disaster preparedness and response is robust in this country, and helps you be
personally and professionally prepared for a disaster.

Always have a personal and family disaster plan.  Thinking about being a volunteer
responder? The time to register is before a disaster, not during one. Choose a volunteer
responder organization that matches your desired level of response.

ANA has educational opportunities for nurses on disaster preparedness. When we are a


prepared profession, we can cope and help our communities recover from disasters better,
faster, and stronger.

Disasters can take many shapes and forms. They can occur naturally or man-made, and
can be accidental or acts of terrorism.  In general, disasters are classified into the following
categories:

 Natural/Environmental
 Chemical
 Biological, including Pandemic Influenza
 Radiological/Nuclear
 Explosive Incidents

The type of response and the level of response needed often depend on the type and
severity of the disaster. Below are resources and other websites that give detailed
explanations of disasters and disaster response. Some special considerations for response
include mental health (for both responders and the victims of a disaster), planning for
special needs populations (such as the elderly, children, persons with disabilities, and
people in incarceration), and surge capacity in hospitals and clinics.

Related Resources

 Pandemic Flu Take the Lead Campaign Ad [pdf]


 Department of Health and Human Services: Center for Mental Health Services
 American Red Cross: Disaster Relief & Recovery Services
 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
 Department of Health and Human Services

Helping You Be Prepared

 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) - Guidance for Mass
Decontamination
Patient Decontamination in a Mass Chemical Exposure Incident: National Planning
Guidance for Communities
 ANA Issue Brief: Who Will Be There? Ethics, the Law, and a Nurse's Duty to
Respond in a Disaster
Unresolved issues of legal, ethical, and professional considerations of disaster
medical response remain a challenge and could hamper the ability of nurses to
respond. A concerted effort to solving these problems is needed, with nurses and
stakeholders at the national, state, and local levels.
 IOM Report on Establishing Altered Standards of Care in Disasters [PDF]

Documents from ANA

 Position Statement: Registered Nurses' Rights and Responsibilities Related to Work


Release During a Disaster [PDF]
 Position Statement: Work Release During a Disaster - Guidelines for
Employers [PDF]

What Nurses Need to Know

Be Competent: Education
ANA considers disaster preparedness and response a part of nursing practice. For nurses,
it has become part of the curriculum at many institutions of nursing education, better
enabling future nurses with the skills to prepare for and respond to emergencies. In
addition, nurses can find continuing education and competency development offered by
several nursing and non-nursing organizations, drawing from text books and articles written
by nurses.  ANA strongly recommends that RNs take a formal class or certification course,
enabling them to keep up with the latest skill development and education by reviewing
nursing journals and other nursing literature, or just keeping up with disaster preparedness
and response organizations’ web sites.

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