ESSAY: Disaster Response Plan

For this assignment you will be developing a disaster plan to address a hypothetical disaster that could plausibly strike the community that you observed for your Windshield Survey.

A disaster can come in many forms. We might tend to associate disasters with mass natural disaster, like Hurricane Katrina or the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan. However, disasters also include relatively small man-made disasters, such as a fire in an apartment building or a gas leak in a factory (Maurer & Smith, 2013). You will also be asked to select one of the articles from the list below that addresses a response to a disaster, or provides guidelines for creating a disaster response plan. You will briefly evaluate the article’s disaster response practices and also explain aspects for the article’s disaster response that would be appropriate to incorporate into your plan, as well as aspects that would not be feasible to incorporate. By evaluating responses to disasters in communities outside of your own, you will be able to bring in global perspectives as well as gain a deeper understanding of aspects of disaster response plans that are universal, as well as aspects that are only primarily applicable to specific communities.

Choose one of the following articles (see the Resources area for links to these articles):

Almutairi and Rondney’s 2013 article, “Critical Cultural Competence for Culturally Diverse Workforces: Toward Equitable and Peaceful Health Care,” from Advances in Nursing Science, volume 36, issue 3, pages 200–212.
ÖztekÄ°n, et al.’s 2014 article, “Educational Needs Concerning Disaster Preparedness and Response: A Comparison of Undergraduate Nursing Students From Istanbul, Turkey, and Miyazaki, Japan,” from Japan Journal of Nursing Science, volume 11, issue 2, pages 94–101.
Yamashita & Kudo’s 2014 article, “How Should We Prepare Differently for the Next Disaster?” from Nursing and Health Sciences, volume 16, issue 1, pages 56–59.
Zaré, et al.’s 2012 article, “Crisis Management of Tohoku; Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, 11 March 2011,” from Iranian Journal of Public Health, volume 41, issue 6, pages 12–20.
Your plan should address and include the following:

Section 1: Article Evaluation (1–2 pages)

An evaluation of the disaster response presented in the article you selected from the provided list.
An explanation of aspects of the article’s disaster response that you plan on incorporating into your own Disaster Response Plan. Please include your rationale for why you are choosing to incorporate these aspects into your plan.
An explanation of aspects of the article’s disaster response that would not be appropriate or plausible to include in your disaster response plan. Please include your rationale for why these aspects would not be appropriate or plausible to incorporate these aspects into your plan.
Section 2: Community Disaster Response Plan (5–7 pages)

Describe the hypothetical disaster for your surveyed community that your plan will be addressing. Be sure to include details such as:
Scope of the disaster.
Intensity of the disaster.
Effects on the community environment as a result of the disaster.
Immediate health impacts on people in the community.
Medium and long-term health impacts on people in the community.
Communication procedures: When and how should public health department nurses communicate with each other in a disaster? When should they communicate with other first responders, law enforcement, and other resources/responders in a disaster?
Communication procedures for coordinating care with hospitals and other resources.
Note: During disasters, acute care hospitals become overwhelmed—less critical patients may be treated at field hospitals, leaving room for critical patients in functioning acute care facilities. Identify who will communicate with whom.
The triage system you would use for assessing victims.
How will you address the needs of vulnerable populations (the elderly, children, mentally ill, homeless, and so on)?
How will you address cultural groups and non-English speaking persons?
Housing and shelter:
How will you let the residents of your community know where to go?
What system will you use to fill shelters?
How will you communicate shelter capacity to prevent overcrowding the shelters? What resources will you use to help staff shelters?
How many nurses will you allocate for shelters? Will you use nurses to staff shelters?
Will you use other nursing resources to staff shelters, such as Red Cross, U.S. Commissioned Corps, military nurses, and so on?
What resources will you use to help provide food, water, and toilet facilities for victims?
Who will you call and when will you call?
What procedures will you implement to prevent disease outbreak?
How will you care for the needs of the public health department nursing staff?
Other requirements and considerations:

Your plan should be as detailed as possible.
Use a minimum of four peer-reviewed journal articles (the article you select from the provided list counts as one of the four) to support the effectiveness of your plan. Be sure to use proper APA style and formatting.
Include a title page.
Include a reference page. Be sure to use proper APA style and formatting.
Times New Roman font, 12 pt.
Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click on the linked resources for helpful writing information.

ANSWER

Section 1: Evaluation of the Article

Critical Cultural Competence for Culturally Diverse Workforces: Toward Equitable and Peaceful Health Care by Amutairi and Rondney (2013).

The disaster response presented in the article related to diversity in healthcare and how healthcare providers in Saudi Arabian hospitals respond to such differences. The article argues about how equity can be attained so that healthcare providers deliver quality services to the people. It necessitates how nursing and other healthcare professions can be more accurate and careful when attending to the socio-cultural context of healthcare delivery. In addition to culturally diverse patients, the article also considers diversity in family background, community as well as the healthcare providers who are also culturally diverse. The findings are drawn from a doctorate research by Almutairi where he analyzed the process of healthcare provision in Saudi Arabia, with cultural diversity as a key variable (Almutairi & Rondney, 2013).

In the Disaster Response Plan, it would be advisable to incorporate diversity in healthcare staff members in all hospitals as a way of averting possible conflict between healthcare providers and the patients. Also, quality of healthcare should be made priority regardless of the patient’s demographic identities. The reason why quality parameters must be emphasized is to ensure that all patients are treated equally at all times. This study helped the investigator in explicating the multifaceted nature of ethos and languages as well as the power that is encouraged by class, race and sexual characteristics. The root of the issue recognized in this study relates to the way individuals have been theorized to hold opinions and views that are shaped by their heritage which later affect the observation of registered nurses working in various hospitals across the country.

The author explains the measures taken by the Saudi Arabian healthcare system and their inefficiencies in equitably providing quality healthcare. The healthcare department has put measures in place to ensure that the training curriculum is inclusive of communal diversity to familiarize professionals with the critical culture competence in the workplace. The rationale of this approach is to show the relationship between diversity in staff members and patients can contribute to vulnerabilities in healthcare provision.

Section 2: Community Disaster Response Plan

Description of the disaster –based on Hurricane Katrina

This was one of the fatal hurricanes that ever hit the United States in history. The disaster starts like a storm that later became a hurricane that extended from the tropical depression in different parts of the landmass that are miles apart (Mundorf, Willits-Smith & Rose, 2015). The days that follow, the weather system gathers strength that may cause devastating effects. As a category one hurricane (based on Saffir-Simpson scale), the tornado may cause landfalls within the continent, the winds may lurch in the deep in the mainland at a sustained speed of 70 miles per hour while the daily rainfall may total to 5 inches. The storm may last up to about eight hours a day on land but may quickly intensify after reaching the large water bodies. After a few days, Katrina strengthens, and its circulation may continue to destroy a specific progression. The storm surge at this point sometimes may rise to a height of 26 feet which would then slam into the coastal cities. A splash of this magnitude devastated homes and tourist resorts along the beachfront.

Scope and intensity of the disaster According to the National Oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA), Katrina ranks sixth of all the destructive storms that were ever recorded in the Atlantic. At its peak, the storm had a maximum speed that stretched 30 nautical miles and an extremely broad swath of force that extended 75 nautical miles eastwards from the center…