Emergency Management Experience Research Articles

Nurses experience in emergency management in coastal area of Tarakan, North Borneo

Background: The high prevalence of cardiovascular disease and lack of adequate health services can have an impact on the high number of emergencies in coastal communities. The condition of health services in coastal communities which the number of health workers, especially nurses is still limited, it becomes important to carry out research related to the experience of nurses in the treatment of emergencies in coastal areas.Objective: This study aims to identify the nurse’s experience of emergency management in coastal areas.Methods: This research was qualitative with a phenomenological design which involved eight participants of nurses who work in the primary healthcare in the coastal area. The data from the interview results was converted into audio files, and then transcribed and analyzed using content analysis manually.Results: There were three main themes of this study including emergency cases that have been handled by nurses at the coastal health center, the competence of nurses in emergencies care, the inhibiting factors of emergencies care at the coastal areas.Conclusion: Emergency management in coastal areas needs to be supported by several factors, including the fulfillment of health care facilities and the improvement of the nurse competencies

Emergency Management of Medical Equipment in Designated Hospitals for Public Health Emergencies

Medical supply is a key resource for responding to public health emergencies and maintaining people's lives and health. As the medical equipment management department, the medical devices department is mainly responsible for the procurement, supply, technical support, management and coordination of medical equipment and medical consumables, playing an important role in epidemic prevention and control. Through the analysis of the expansion cases of designated hospitals, the experience of emergency management of medical equipment has been accumulated, which has strong practicability and replicability.

Challenges Created by the COVID-19 Pandemic: Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Disaster Management Perspectives.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has presented unique challenges to pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) departments. The purpose of this study was to identify these challenges and ascertain how centers overcame barriers in creating solutions to continue to provide high-quality care and keep their workforce safe during the early pandemic. This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with physicians in leadership positions who have disaster or emergency management experience. Participants were identified through purposive sampling. Interviews were recorded and transcribed electronically. Themes and codes were extracted from the transcripts by 2 independent coders. Constant comparison analysis was performed until thematic saturation was achieved. Member-checking was completed to ensure trustworthiness. Fourteen PEM-trained physicians participated in this study. Communication, leadership and planning, clinical practice, and personal adaptations were the principal themes identified. Recommendations elicited include improving communication strategies; increasing emergency department (ED) representation within hospital-wide incident command; preparing for a surge and accepting adult patients; personal protective equipment supply and usage; developing testing strategies; and adaptations individuals made to their practice to keep themselves and their families safe. By sharing COVID-19 experiences and offering solutions to commonly encountered problems, pediatric EDs may be better prepared for future pandemics.

Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Experience of Emergency Management

As climate change exacerbates exposure to disasters, a growing body of scholarship provides evidence that some groups experience significant barriers in accessing and participating in emergency services. This article reports on the findings of an exploratory, qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with four lesbian or bisexual women in Australia. The aim of the study is to better understand the degree to which emergency services’ policies, programs and procedures accommodate diversity and the needs of lesbian and bisexual women as ‘clients’ and paid staff or volunteers. Results are organised under five key categories: language; discrimination; sector acknowledgment; the role of faith-based organisations; and ways forward. The data is presented through the women’s voices and documents their lived experiences of discrimination. The study provides an opportunity to consider how discrimination against sexual and gender identity diverse minorities (LGBT people) intersects with, as it draws on, discrimination against women, increasing lesbian and bisexual women’s experiences of marginalisation as emergency sector clients, employees and volunteers. It also provides an opportunity to address the effects of systemic discrimination in the organisation and delivery of emergency services, promoting a more diverse and inclusive emergency sector.

Clinical Experience in Emergency Management of Severe Facial Trauma.

Published reports describing management of complex facial lacerations in the emergency department are limited, and there is little guidance on the treatment of massive soft tissue avulsions of the head and face or severely contaminated head and face lacerations. Here, the authors report on the wealth of clinical experience they have gained in treating major head and facial injuries through an emergency trauma repair platform that was established in the department of orthopedic surgery at their hospital. Six patients with massive soft tissue avulsions of the head and face caused by trauma were treated in our department between September 2017 and December 2018. Avulsion injuries occurred to the eyelids, ears, face, and part of the scalp. Defects extended from the skin to the surface of the bone. Emergency surgical repair involved reasonable debridement of the wound surface, accurate and meticulous suture, and use of local skin flaps. No patients experienced postoperative complications, such as necrosis, infection, or scar hyperplasia. Our postoperative satisfaction survey showed that 3 patients were very satisfied and 1 patient was relatively satisfied with their outcomes. Several patients (2/6) still had some degree of deformity in the soft tissue around the eyes, which required further surgery CONCLUSION:: Satisfactory functional and aesthetic outcomes can be achieved through reasonable debridement of the wound surface, accurate and meticulous suture, and use of local skin flaps in patients with massive soft tissue avulsions of the head and face caused by trauma.

Discussion on EU medicinal products regulatory expectations and flexibility during COVID-19 public health emergency

The current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health crisis is posing unprecedented challenges on public health needs of European Union (EU). EU has updated Questions and Answers on Regulatory Expectations for Medicinal Products for human use during the COVID-19 Pandemic in July 2020, adjusted the regulatory expectations and flexibility related to marketing authorization, inspection, pharmacovigilance activities, products information and labelling, etc, during COVID-19 pandemic, articulated series of appropriate measures and provided flexibility legal tools such as exceptional change management process, distant assessment, postponing the testing, prioritisation of pharmacovigilance activities, to help manufacturers and distributors of pharmaceutical products to cope with the consequences of the pandemic, ensure the high standards of quality, safety, efficacy of medicines, and availability of medicinal products. The emergency management experience of EU was still useful for perfecting the drug emergency management system of China.

A quantitative assessment of institutions of higher education disaster preparedness and resilience.

Assess levels of disaster preparedness in institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the United States. An anonymous, 57-question survey targeted individuals responsible for emergency management at IHEs across the US descriptive statistics and bivariate chi-square analysis were reported. Using the established threshold score of the initial Cities Readiness Initiative from the CDC, an individual respondent's composite score of 70 percent or higher across 23 specific questions within the 57-question survey was labeled as "prepared." Chi-square analysis identified variables associated with lower preparedness levels at IHEs not achieving the minimum 70 percent score. Having a campus law enforcement officer serve the additional role of emergency manager had a negative association with being prepared [χ2 (1) = 10.18, p < 0.001]. Having emergency management as a separate university function from campus law enforcement had a positive relationship with being prepared [χ2 (1) = 18.55, p < 0.001]. Staffing the emergency management function with a professional having less than 3 years of emergency management experience had a negative association with being prepared. Our results indicate that minimizing the mission of emergency management by simply tasking a campus law enforcement officer with the extra responsibility of emergency management or entertaining less professionally qualified personnel to lead emergency management's complex mission can lead to disastrous results. Not only is preparedness impacted, but also resilience when facing disaster situations. Our nation continues to strive to become more resilient when facing such adverse events, as formally embraced and emphasized in the 2017 National Security Strategy. Research continues to offer best practices and unfortunately continues to highlight gaps. While the higher education community is not one of the 16 federal critical infrastructure sectors, identified gaps such as those presented in our findings as well as those published by the National Academies of Sciences are cause for alarm. Not only are higher education campuses generating invaluable contributions to society in general, bio-innovation, public health, and medicine, to name a few, they are a core stakeholder in resilience research and implementation. Yet, research continues to indicate preparedness and therefore resilience gaps in this sector. The authors propose implications for practice, policy, and research to assist IHEs in achieving a more comprehensive, sustainable level of resilience.

Proposed Curriculum Guidelines for Masters Programs in EM With an IS Focus

Information systems (IS) in emergency management (EM) support situational awareness and agility during a disaster so that professionals do not only need to follow rigid pre-defined plans that might be unsuitable in the unfolding situation. To use IS effectively, managers need an understanding of the capabilities of these systems; this can be achieved through an appropriate set of educational courses. This article presents the results of the analysis of a survey that proposed EM and IS courses for master level programs. The survey was completed by 373 practitioners, academics and/or researchers with EM experience. All proposed courses were rated above a 4 on a 7-point scale for how essential they are to a curriculum. A qualitative analysis indicates that some low ratings were due to disagreement over the described course content. An unexpected finding was that a substantial number of respondents spontaneously expressed opposition to the use of IS for EM in general. Findings are discussed and a preliminary curriculum is proposed.

Extracting Causal Relations from Emergency Cases Based on Conditional Random Fields

As causality extraction from cases is essential for emergency causal learning, it serves as a foundation for follow-up emergency management. However, there remain barriers to break for applying the previous causality extraction methods to emergency management. The experience of emergency management inspires us that the cause of disasters should have existed in the time before the effect. Therefore, causality relations can be seen as distinct temporal relations. By utilizing the temporal characteristics of causality, this paper redefines the causality extraction as a special kind of temporality extraction and presents a method for extracting causality from emergency cases based on conditional random fields (CRFs). Then the task turns to be a sequence labeling process which can be solved by involving a CRFs model. Several typhoon-related emergency cases are chosen as the experimental dataset. To seek the impact of different features on the model performance, two feature templates are also chosen to train the model. The experimental results show that our approaches can not only deal with marked causal relations, but also work effectively on unmarked causal relations. Besides, the CRFs model can even extract causal relations between sentences.

Components of expertise of public officials in emergency management in Korea: An exploratory study

This study attempted to identify the components of expertise of public officials working in emergency management. For this purpose, a Delphi survey was conducted to ascertain the views of public officials in emergency management regarding the components of expertise. Results showed that public officials in emergency management in the central government considered the most necessary component as horizontal collaboration ability with government organizations on the same level. Public officials working in emergency management in local government considered on the job experience in emergency management the most needed component. Regarding the stage of emergency management, public officials in charge of prevention and preparedness considered professional knowledge of emergency management theory/technology the most necessary. For those in charge of response, shrewd judgment ability was most required, while those in charge of recovery considered on the job experience in emergency management the most required. In terms of the position of public officials, higher-ranked public officials in emergency management regarded fast decision-making capability as most important, whereas lower-ranked public officials in emergency management regarded on the job experience in emergency management or job responsibility as most important.

Design Principles for Crisis Information Management Systems

Since Hurricane Katrina, a lot of research has gone into improving disaster management through the use of crisis information management systems (CIMS). There has been much interest in how to design dynamic CIMS, particularly with respect to web-based emergency management systems. In the authors' research, they set out to design and develop a distributed web-based training and research tool for emergency managers and scholars. In order to develop their training system, they needed to simulate the CIMS that emergency managers use during a crisis and with which they could run training and research simulations. This raised the question: What exactly is a CIMS, and how does one design one? In order to answer this question, the authors engaged in nine months of field research at the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center in Miami-Dade County, FL. Through their field research and the emergency management experience of one of the authors, they identified several additional design principles for CIMS in today's technological and communication landscape. This paper outlines the resulting recommendations.

The sinking of the Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry in the Red Sea: The integration of disaster support system models and emergency management experience

This study analyzes emergency management plan utilized during maritime disaster experience. Qualitative methods were used to explore the various factors that contributed to the sinking of Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry in the Red Sea in 2006. The study results showed inadequate DSS and its impact on the existence of risk vulnerability and miscommunication. Recommendations were provided to raise attention to such type of disasters and to inform the industry, decision makers, and emergency management administrators on the need to develop effective policies and standards to protect the public against devastating consequences.

Training emergency managers for earthquake response: challenges and opportunities

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight the crucial role of decision makers and emergency managers in reducing the unpleasant consequences of disasters.Design/methodology/approachAn attempt has been made to clarify the measures for planning and implementation of training issues in earthquake emergency response for the emergency managers as an essential part at various managerial levels.FindingsThe paper reveals that, although the high‐level managers such as ministers are authoritative bodies for managing the routine problems of the country, in situations such as a “major emergency”, specific knowledge and experience of emergency issues are required for the emergency management to be successful. It also explores the ways and opportunities for achieving successful training programmes for the emergency managers.Research limitations/implicationsThe existing challenges, including the lack of adequate background knowledge and experience in emergency management, insufficient time to train, the inadequacy of the required technical supporting tools, and other related issues, emerge, which need to be identified.Practical implicationsThe research can be practically useful for emergency managers who are involved in response activities in disasters by providing suitable and appropriate recommendations for efficient training.Originality/valueThere are only a few works on training of earthquake emergency managers, especially in developing countries such as Iran.

Blessings in disguise: public health emergency preparedness for World Youth Day 2008

Mass gatherings, such as World Youth Day (WYD) 2008 in Sydney, provide an opportunity for public health workers to gain emergency management experience. Communicable disease (mainly influenza) among pilgrims was the major public health issue during WYD. Public health workers also identified environmental health issues, resulting in hazard reduction measures being made to reduce falls. Other public health issues highlighted include training, communication, surge capacity, and health education. Lessons learned from planning WYD mass accommodation could be applied to emergency accommodation in the case of evacuation.

My practical experience in emergency management

Charts the career of the author through the fire service and the subsequent major disasters which occurred during that time. Advocates the importance of adequate disaster plans, and explains the development of Lincolnshire’s civil contingency plan.