Emergency medical nursing equipment isn’t just for nurses working in emergency rooms or on ambulances. A pediatric nurse working at a sleepy family practice may suddenly be confronted with a choking patient. A midwife at a birthing center may have to revive a neonate or treat a catastrophic hemorrhage.

Hospitals and long-term care facilities pride themselves on being equipped to handle most emergencies, from power outages to storms. However, evacuations because of natural disasters are actually quite common.

The transition to a new year is a fine time to revisit emergency preparedness plans—both for your agency or organization and for the larger community you serve. These six recent emergency preparedness studies should inform your own planning, as well as your educational efforts within your community. These emergency management trends can help you stay ahead of the curve. 

Preparing for a disaster is an enormous undertaking since there are always so many unknowns. For rural hospitals, this challenge is further amplified due to issues such as remote location, limited resources, and staffing shortages. Yet by actively preparing for the types of disasters that rural hospitals are most likely to face, such difficulties can be lessened.

Public health experts have been warning about a worldwide pandemic for decades. Unwilling or unable to believe what could happen, most people put their heads in the sand. We’ve now seen that a local virus can tear through lives across the globe, upending everything we do. The next pandemic is inevitable. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as COVID, and we will be better prepared. There’s a distinct possibility, however, that it will be worse. Here’s what your agency can do now to get ready for whatever lies ahead. 

Sooner or later, every nursing home will face a major emergency. Nursing home emergencies exist along a continuum.Issues such as choking may affect only a single patient, whereas outbreaks of the flu and other infectious diseases such as COVID-19 can endanger the lives of every resident. In 2017, natural disasters affected 8 percent of the U.S. population—and nursing home residents are not exempt from these statistics. Any of these incidents can lead to additional health issues, such as infectious outbreaks and chronic respiratory issues, so it is important to implement a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan. 

As COVID-19, the virus that causes the novel coronavirus infection, continues to ravage the world, medical providers have had to change virtually everything about how they practice. Suctioning a patient is no exception. Providers once only had to weigh the risks and benefits of suctioning to the patient. Now they must also consider how suctioning might endanger their own health, and how it might imperil subsequent patients if they become infected. 

Airway suctioning can generate dangerous aerosols that effectively transmit the virus. In emergency scenarios, Suction Assisted Laryngoscopy and Airway Decontamination (SALAD) may offer a lower-risk alternative to traditional airway suctioning.