Understanding The Basics Of Medical Disaster Response For Businesses
One of the key safety considerations that every business must address is a safety plan for responding to mass medical disasters. Many things can trigger a mass medical emergency, including not just natural disasters but also chemical exposures, workplace violence, and more. Since you cannot completely prevent every potential risk, it is essential that you are prepared. As a business owner, you should reach out to a local healthcare coalition about the necessary emergency response and build a plan that will help you and your employees handle a mass medical emergency.
Locate Your Local Hospitals
Before you can adequately build an emergency response plan, you need to identify all of your local hospitals. The healthcare coalition can help you with this, as they will have a list of the healthcare organizations that are equipped to help with response issues.
For example, you will need to know what hospitals near you qualify as level-one or level-two trauma centers. These centers are the ones that are fully equipped for any level emergency, including quarantine needs and major surgeries. You'll have to know which ones near you qualify, as they will have to be clearly identified on your plan.
List the healthcare facilities in order of priority according to which types of traumas will be delivered to each one. This way, it is perfectly clear which patients need to be transported where in the event of a disaster.
List Local Emergency Response And Contact Numbers
A key part of your emergency response plan needs to include a full list of the local emergency response numbers. This should include the names and phone numbers for those in control of your region's healthcare coalition as well as the numbers for each of the local hospitals you identified.
You'll also need to include names and phone numbers for all of the executives and senior managers of your business. That way, they can be contacted in the event that something occurs while they are not on the property.
Finally, the next thing you need to consider as part of your planning is a fully defined triage plan. This includes a variety of details. Include instructions for assessing the severity of each injury as well as how to immediately treat each of those injuries. You should also include instructions for dealing with worsening conditions after an injury has been treated because you need to be sure that people are prepared to deal with any kind of situation.
Establish a plan for addressing transport needs, too. Define the labels for each level of injuries so that patients can be easily recognized and treated or transported.
The more you understand about emergency medical response for disasters, the easier it is to establish a plan for your business.