Who Will Show Up?: Developing a Realistic Staffing Plan for a Disaster

Adams, Lavonne M.

Monday, 31 October 2011: 10:00 AM

Lavonne M. Adams, PhD, RN, CCRN
Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Devon M. Berry, PhD, RN
College of Nursing, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to discuss the ability and willingness of healthcare providers to report to work during various disaster scenarios.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will discuss barriers to the ability and willingness of health care providers to report to work during a disaster.

Healthcare organizations routinely make disaster plans, assuming that staff will be available to carry out the details. Recent studies suggest this assumption is flawed. Without sufficient staff to provide for sudden increases in patient volume during a disaster, surge capacity diminishes, yet limited research has focused on staff ability and willingness to report to work during disaster. This study sought to increase knowledge in this arena. Our purpose was to 1) determine ability and willingness of healthcare personnel to report to work during disaster and 2) identify barriers to reporting to work during disaster.

Setting:

A Midwestern community-based health care network located near a high-value terrorism target.

Sample:

All non-clinical and clinical personnel (over 2700) from positions considered essential to disaster response were invited to participate in the survey. 1342 employees completed the survey (response rate 50%).

Survey:

Web-based and paper survey instrument based on “Disaster Survey” created by Qureshi et al. (2005) and modified by members of the network’s Research Council. In response to scenarios specific to the network’s locale, participants were asked to indicate their ability and willingness to report to work and to provide demographic characteristics. All responses were anonymous. Statistical analysis was completed via SPSS. The study was approved by IRBs of the health network and the university employing the primary investigator.

Outcomes:

Clinical and non-clinical personnel reported multiple barriers for ability or willingness to work during time of disaster.

Willingness to report ranged from 69.1%-93%.

Ability to report ranged from 71.1%-90.6%

Responsibility for children correlated significantly with ability and willingness to report to work for most scenarios.

Conclusions and Recommendations:

Clinical and non-clinical health care personnel experience barriers affecting their ability and willingness to respond during disaster. Development of realistic disaster plans requires active exploration of these barriers and solutions to alleviate them.

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