Communication and disaster management in the health sector
Communication and disaster management in the health sector should be well established such that information flows smoothly for proper actions or response to be taken especially during an emergency. This assignment aims to illustrate the importance of having appropriate communication system and disaster management strategies in health care issue during emergencies. Major disasters and accidents in most cases occur without notice, and for healthcare workers to be able to save lives where possible, they need a prompt response. For this to happen communication between medicals staff, nurses, and emergency response teams must exist as first as possible. Additionally, the citizens should have a way to inform healthcare facilities of an emergence of matters such as an outbreak of a disease or local authorities who can act to provide first aid before health team arrives. Therefore, communication companies should ensure that network is active in every part of the country since with the current technology phone calls are the fastest means that is widely available in every state. An emergency response should be one call away. Therefore, there should be a special team that should always stay prepared in case of such an event. This team should comprise of health care providers from all departments to provide thorough and quality care to victims of a particular health issue. The team also should cover a specific area in square kilometers for efficiency and timely response.
When looking for trending news in the social media especially the ones that deals with worldwide news one cannot lack to find a calamity somewhere that has led to the death of people. Most of such news originate from developing countries, and the cause of the deaths is poor disaster management strategies and if one can dig deeper, poor response time will be evident. Before the introduction of mobile phones, responsible teams for first aid used to claim that they received the message late but with current technology, such claims cease to exist. Therefore, communication has improved such that information reaches the intended recipient in good time (Palttala, et al., 2012). The only issue that has not been solved is that of managing disaster in a fashion that would ensure life is not lost. Communication within healthcare facilities as well as their response time should be addressed as well. This is because at times the information may reach the hospital in good time but the time taken to act or contain the situation in the hospital is large. The cause is usually lack of effective emergency department in a hospital leading to the need to accommodate the casualties of a disaster in the normal wards. This, of course, would cause difficulties since there were plans of management for other patients in the hospital. The other issue is that the healthcare providers are not adequate to deal with a considerable number of disaster victims and due to poor triaging some patients end up losing their lives.<\/p>
Triage challenges
Most healthcare facilities have a specific way proving care to patients following their health status. Therefore, triaging is not a big challenge when it comes to a normal hospital setting. The problem with triaging takes place when there is an accident somewhere, and the casualties are taQedn to the nearest hospitals. Since the situation is always tensed and every healthcare worker tends to rush and attend to the emergency, normal health operations in the hospital become paralyzed. Most casualties come crying and calling for help loudly, and some of them come while unconscious. Due to a limited number of health professionals, there have never been more than needed in any health setting there will be a shortage, and hence every emergency patient cannot be attended at the same time. To conduct a triage in such a situation is very had because every patient requires being stabilized (Vakkalanka, & Engu, 2012). Losing life in such a case is easy since one could be having internal bleeding and because he or she might be unconscious, complaints cannot be raised. Such a client might be assumed and accorded inadequate care which would eventually make him or her loose life. In a different situation where an outbreak of a disease have occurred, let say due to consumption of unhealthy food product, every patient would be having similar symptoms. It will be hard to segregate them regarding severity since everyone will be tensed and pleading for interventions. In such a case, people who consumed a lot of the toxin should be served first but since collecting such a history is not realistic, care is given randomly which leads to the development of complications or death.
Therefore, there is a need for a development of medical tea with specialized personnel to deal with disaster outcome of every nature. This way, the issue of triaging will be solved since these health workers will be able to differentiate between detrimental and severe symptoms of a condition suffered by patients during emergency situations. In most cases, especially in hospitals, nurses are the ones supposed to conduct triaging as doctors serve them in the out-patient department. Therefore, training should be provided to a select team of nurses in every health setting such that upon the emergence of a disaster they will be able to select a patient who requires immediate care to save a life. Patients also should be taught about triaging so that when they are not served first, and they arrived before the most-sick patients can lead to the misunderstanding that can make them not to return for health services.
Medical response
Most hospitals have a challenge of having an inadequate number of doctors in the country. Actually, this is a worldwide challenge where individuals graduating from medical schools and the already existing medical doctors cannot be able to satisfy the demand for healthcare services. Therefore, upon the emergence of a critical situation or a disaster in the nearby, the response time for these doctors will be low because a significant number of them are usually in their shifts attending to patients who desperately require their services. For instance, a doctor conducting a surgery cannot leave it incomplete or hurriedly hasten the procedure (which will eventually harm the patient) to attend to other patients. In some situation, the time at which the information reaches the medical staff of a given region is very crucial since they can be able to prepare and plan themselves accordingly (O'Sullivan, et al., 2013). For example, if there is an outbreak of cholera in a given region and the information reaches the health care providers early, a doctor who was to conduct a surgery cannot reschedule it to go and address the situation. A plan will be made, and the doctors who were to provide general medical services such as attending to patients in the outpatient department and the wards will be sent to address the situation in time. If this information arrives late, and the victims are dying from dehydration and others developing complications especially if they already had other health problems, important procedures will have to be postponed in the hospital to try and prevent mass death (epidemic lose).
People confuse medical response with responses from paramedics. In most cases, when an accident occurs the first group of individuals to arrive on the scene is majorly that of paramedics and maybe one doctor or so to conduct an assessment of the situation. If paramedics cannot be able to help the patients, they transfer them to a nearby hospital for stabilization and preservation of life. Medical response normally occurs when the doctors will be admitting and attending to the patients who have already received first aid services. The reason for their delayed response is because of they are always busy while on duty. They must be available in the hospital because a situation that requires prompt action might erupt and in a case where there is no a doctor around unnecessary life-loss can occur. Secondly, they have defined roles that require them to provide healthcare services without prejudice and hence abandoning patients in the hospital to go and serve others is unethical. The only thing that can make a doctor prefer serving a certain patient before others who seek health earlier is triage. One way in which a medical response can be improved is to first increase the number of doctors in a hospital especially in the emergency department and also extend the size and kind of services provided. This would ensure that there are medical officers who can travel to a spot of tragedy and help manage patient from there reducing the number of emergency cases on admission.
Enlarging emergency department involves having large hospital wards and increasing number of health workers in them. This means that accommodation of a larger number of patients who can be served simultaneously will be realistic (Palttala, & Vos, 2012). Since the number of doctors will increase in the department, plus doctors from other departments in the hospital who will come to help with the situation will lead to increase in medical response. Casualties of an accident can benefit in such a situation. The distance between the area of tragedy and availability of communication system determines the rate of medical response. For instances, if a public bus has an accident and all of the passengers survive but sustains severe injuries, giving this information to the doctor would help them to prepare appropriately for both major and minor surgeries as well as other medical procedure that involve attending to patients as per their health issues. World health organization recommends that in every 5 km square there be a health facility that can serve people living in that area. In countries or counties where this is the case medical responses will be very first because information can flow faster and in a more specific manner from one hospital to another when a health center sends a team to rescue the accident.
Communication and media relations
The role of the media is to communicate information to the citizens and relevant bodies in the country. Forms of communication are different and for government institutions such as polices department and health sectors to be able to act appropriately they need to have information (Velev, & Zlateva, 2012). It is very hard for a person to see an accident somewhere and fail to inform the police, the local authority my call ambulance from a nearby hospital to go and help with the situation. This way, the information would have reached that particular hospital and with their team there plans to help the patients appropriately will be made in case of admission. This somehow seems to be complicated and therefore the need to increase the rate of information transfer from citizens to hospitals. Thus, communication system should be developed such that citizen can speak to the emergency department in a particular healthcare organization to inform on accident. This can be done through the provision of phone numbers that are working and attended by customer care personnel who should receive this message. To discourage cases of giving false information, legal measures which include heavy fines and probation work should be imposed on individuals who misinform these emergency departments.
Mass media plays a very crucial role in providing or serving people with information freely or at a very low cost. A lot of people depend on them for data concerning what is happening around the globe. For instance, it was the media that was utilized to spread information concerning Ebola in Western Africa countries to warn international community that a pandemic health condition has erupted and action should be taken to fight it before things worsen. Health organizations, non-governmental organizations and different countries produced doctors and nurses to go and provide help in those countries. Also, in case of an accident, the social media because they have surveillance cameras and their agents on the ground usually warn people to avoid using certain roads or to slow down while using certain routes because there can be an accident. International social media companies can also warn people to avoid visiting certain countries because there is either disputes or an impending tragedy that might occur such as an earthquake of the tsunami. Therefore, one cannot ignore the media when it comes to communication of information. Health sectors have somehow failed to involve social media especially local stations that receive information of almost everything happening in their area of operation. Involving them is essential because the media can be relied upon to provide serious information regarding tragedy or disease outbreak.
Public health issue
Public health is a field that needs communication especially with people living in a certain area and disposed to a particular health problem or are at risk of contracting a health issue. Also, warning the people against a suspected tragedy such as a hurricane or El Nino is done through public health officers whom in the process are supposed to educate people on the best action to take. Public health offices should first handle disease outbreak, and when the problem requires medical attention, they inform the health sectors to send their experts to take charge of the situation. The office of public health officers should conduct research regarding their area and understand the most common health problem in the area as well as comprehend the health risk in the region so that they can plan for intervention in case of an outbreak or they can educate the people and initiate preventive measures. This information should be communicated to the higher offices in the rank either for a support request or record purposes (Menon et al., 2016).
Mechanism of injury
Most healthcare providers utilize the mechanism of injury to tell the severity of an injury and hence the plan for management. Taking an instance of a car accident where two personal cars have had a head-on collision accident, the healthcare providers use the information concerning the accident and supports the patient before diagnostic information from the laboratory is out. In a situation where a disaster has taken place, and a large number of people have been injured, the health workers might use the mechanism of injury to triage patients (Sørensen, et al., 2012). The most injured casualties can be managed first and then followed by others who are fewer and mild injuries.
Medical surveillance
Some organizations and personnel are involved in the activities of medical surveillance since it is formulated to serve a great purpose. Through this surveillance, epidemics can be prevented since a lot of research are conducted to detect the health situation of a certain region. When the surveillance is perfectly working, they can be able to identify threating disaster be it a natural or artificial one. The natural disaster includes earthquakes, disease outbreaks, hurricane and floods, artificial ones include disease from chemical emissions or pollution, unhealthy food products, and illegal drugs supply in a certain region. This information should be provided to the people in that area for the purpose creating awareness. Also, the medical surveillance team should inform the government and other relevant organizations to come up with preventive measures and programs that would help save people from suffering a disaster. Therefore, medical surveillance should be taken seriously by creating an enabling environment for them to operate. They also should provide their response in time to allow adequate time for proper preparations to be made.
Conclusion
Communication is very crucial in the medical field especially in solving terrors and disasters leading to casualties. The speed at which the information reaches the medical team, as well as the content and reliability, determine aspects such as response rate and preparedness of healthcare workers. Several interventions can be taken to detect and prevent disaster from happening especially when the already installed organizations work effectively. The current problem in hospital departments can be solved, and services improved such that casualties of a disaster can be managed well and a life saved. This department should also be improved such that it receives information regarding medical issues happening locally and worldwide. Through such systems, other information such as trends, changes, and discoveries of interventions and procedures used to treat various condition can be obtained and implemented if the outcome is effective.
Reference
Palttala, P., Boano, C., Lund, R., & Vos, M. (2012). Communication gaps in disaster management: Perceptions by experts from governmental and non‐governmental organizations. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 20(1), 2-12.
O'Sullivan, T. L., Kuziemsky, C. E., Toal-Sullivan, D., & Corneil, W. (2013). Unraveling the complexities of disaster management: A framework for critical social infrastructure to promote population health and resilience. Social Science & Medicine, 93, 238-246.
Velev, D., & Zlateva, P. (2012). Use of social media in natural disaster management. Intl. Proc. of Economic Development and Research, 39, 41-45.
Palttala, P., & Vos, M. (2012). Quality indicators for crisis communication to support emergency management by public authorities. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 20(1), 39-51.
Menon, V. G., Pathrose, J. P., & Priya, J. (2016). Ensuring reliable communication in disaster recovery operations with reliable routing technique. Mobile Information Systems, 2016.
Sørensen, K., Van den Broucke, S., Fullam, J., Doyle, G., Pelikan, J., Slonska, Z., & Brand, H. (2012). Health literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of definitions and models. BMC public health, 12(1), 80.
Vakkalanka, S., & Engu, R. (2012). Requirements Triage-Challenges and Solutions. International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, 3(2), 41.
