Assignment:Emergency Evacuation of Patients

please do by 12 noon
In an emergency evacuation of patients, training plays an important role. Here is an incidence of emergency evacuation of Phillips County Regional Medical Center discussed by Vogt and Sorenson (1999):

Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 8, 1997, clouds of foul-smelling smoke began pouring from an herbicide and pesticide packaging plant in West Helena, Arkansas. An alert was sounded, employees evacuated, and the West Helena fire department was called. As three firefighters prepared to enter the plant, the chemical compounds exploded, collapsing a solid concrete block wall, and killing all three firefighters. As the odorous smoky cloud drifted away from the plant, authorities ordered residents in a 2-mile area downwind of the plant to evacuate and those in the 2- to 3-mile zone to shelter in . . . The findings indicate that 90% of those that were told to evacuate did so but only 27% of those told to shelter-in-place did so, with 68% opting to evacuate instead.

Assignment:Emergency Evacuation of Patients

Assignment:Emergency Evacuation of Patients

The implications of these findings for emergency managers is that people will likely choose to evacuate when both warnings to evacuate and warnings to shelter are issued to residents in close proximity to each other (Abstract section, para. 1).

The evacuation of the medical center was facilitated by efforts taken 6 months earlier to update the hospital’s evacuation plan and reconfirm support agreements for relocation sites and supplies. At that time of updating the plan, the entire staff had also participated in a mock drill. When the safety officer observed the buildings across the highway being evacuated and started questioning officials on the possibility of also being evacuated, evacuation plans familiar to staff were in place and had been practiced. When the Director of Nursing gave the “Code White” alert (the signal that an evacuation to an off-site facility would follow) staff was amply prepared to move patients (p. 11).

Interviews with staff indicated that all patients that could be discharged were sent home with a physician’s nurse. Another four or five patients (the most seriously ill) were transferred to a hospital about a half hour away. The majority of the patients 11 (approximately 17) in the rehabilitation unit were transferred to a vacant wing of the Crestpark Nursing home accompanied by hospital support staff. Only one maternity patient evacuated to the Phillips College—Community College where the hospital staff had evacuated and opened emergency room services. The evacuation of patients began at 1:40 p.m. and all patients (except for two on ventilators and one being stabilized in the emergency room) were out 55 minutes later. The remaining three patients were evacuated 15 minutes later. A variety of vehicles transported patients—vans, school buses, ambulances, private cars, and mortuary services. As a precaution, National Guard personnel provided security at the evacuated hospital (pp. 11–12).

On the basis of your understanding on the topic, answer the following questions regarding the incidence of emergency evacuation mentioned above:

What does this study tell you about the lack of training for the community?
Why is communication and education of the community important in saving lives?
Was the community clear on what the procedures were? How?
Why was the evacuation of the hospital so successful?
How important are external relationships with other agencies to having an efficient evacuation plan?
Your review should be at least 2- to 3-page Microsoft Word document, not counting the cover page or the reference page.

Support your responses with reasoning and examples.

Cite any sources in APA format.

Submission Details

Name your document SU_HSC4040_W2_A2_LastName_FirstInitial.doc.

Submit your document to the W2 Assignment 2 Dropbox by Week 2, Day 6.

Reference:

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.