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. 

The total cost of natural disasters reached more than $268 billion worldwide in 2020. Catastrophes such as hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, floods, and earthquakes displace millions of people every year and send thousands to emergency departments.

Climate change, increasingly crowded urban centers, and failing infrastructure all play a role in exacerbating the effect of these disasters. Yet many EMS departments remain woefully unprepared. Don’t wait for a natural disaster to hit your area–prepare now, because once disaster strikes, it’s too late and lives can be lost.

Massive health disasters are increasingly common. As climate change accelerates, so too will the rate at which people die or are injured because of climate-related natural disasters. In 2020, natural disasters claimed more than 8,000 lives worldwide. Infections and contagious diseases,  food and waterborne illnesses, global pandemics, and even the flu can trigger widespread public health catastrophes. 

In addition, illnesses are increasingly intersecting with natural disasters to produce serious emergencies. Natural disasters displace people, cause crowded conditions, and increase the risk of poor sanitation, allowing disease to more rapidly spread. Public health nurses play a critical role in educating the public and providing support to those recovering from various disaster scenarios.

To prepare a hospital to function in an emergency means implementation of a multi-faceted process that requires answers to a tremendous number of questions–Where can we create additional patient care areas in an emergency? How will we keep intubated patients safe if the hospital loses power? How can we make our food supply last if delivery trucks cannot get to the hospital?

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.

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.

The rapid worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus has compelled many seemingly impossible choices: Hospital administrators have had to choose between forcing people to die alone and potentially spreading the virus to others; labor and delivery units must now weigh separating birthing people from their partners or risking transmitting the virus to others, including vulnerable infants. Perhaps one of the most challenging conundrums during this pandemic has been managing the simple realities of CPR. 

The American Heart Association (AHA) recently changed its CPR guidelines to respond to this emerging crisis. Here’s what you need to know.

Overweight or obese patients can present suctioning difficulties. Because most American adults are overweight or obese, medical providers must train in the treatment of bariatric patients. These patients are highly susceptible to airway difficulties, particularly during surgery. The following strategies can help you effectively suction bariatric patients, even when they present with difficult airways.

The COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally shifted the emergency medicine landscape. Providers are exhausted, afraid, and overwhelmed by an increasingly taxed health system. Patients’ lives hang in the balance, and research shows that they’re just as afraid. Fear of the novel coronavirus is now keeping patients with emergency symptoms away from the emergency room.