Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision

Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL ESSAY PAPERS ON Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision please take a look about the comments and fix them please. my prof comments : good start – we do nee dot disucss a couple of points. Usig this sample has some limitiations so lets talk and find one more tool to add to your methods. See comments please. ——- let me know please what i have to answer them because i have presentation with my facility after tomorrow. Also highlight the comments after corrections. Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision attachment_1 An Emergency Operations Plan for King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital January 22, 2020 Abstract Emergency Operations Plans are an important component of public health emergency preparedness. They are vital to mitigating the consequences of a disaster. The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) in King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital, Al-Jubail needs to be revised and updated to better respond to and recover from emergencies. In this paper, is thus, a proposed EOP model which contains five mission areas: protection, prevention, response, mitigation, and recovery. These mission areas are defined and followed by an outline of planning principles that feature a consideration of all potential hazards and threats, leadership, provision for functional needs and access to resources, and the use of a collaborative procedure in EOP planning. The principles are followed by instruction in the six steps of the planning process: forming a collaborative planning team; identifying hazards and threats and risk assessment; determining objectives and goals; developing an action plan; preparing, reviewing, and approving the plan; and planning maintenance and implementation. Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision 1 An Emergency Operations Plan for King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital 1.1 Background of Study King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail takes a proactive role to mitigate, respond to, and recover from any possible technological and natural hazards or terrorist events. The Hospital is occasionally monitored to determine the occurrence or the potential occurrence of an event that could result in an emergency or a disaster. King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail hopes to prevent emergencies as soon as they occur and to facilitate an efficient and orderly response to and recovery from all emergencies and disasters. These emergencies can be prevented with the use of an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP), which is a tool that provides the processes and the structure that the organization uses to respond to and initially recover from an event. This EOP is the response and recovery component of the hospital’s Emergency Management Plan. While King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail already has an EOP, there is a need to revise and update it to better respond to and recover from emergencies, especially since the EOP was last updated five years ago. King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital’s EOP is meant to be an all-hazards plan and is designed to respond to all the emergencies that could affect hospital operations as identified in the Hazards Vulnerability Analysis. The Emergency Operations Plan is established to ensure that there are available personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and other resources required to continue with patient care during emergencies. Furthermore, the plan addresses victims’ medical needs during emergencies. King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital’s current Emergency Operations Plan is inclusive of the six critical elements of: Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision Staff responsibilities Utilities Resources and assets Communications Security and safety Clinical Supports services It has been five years since King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital’s EOP was last updated. Within this period, there have been several occurrences all over the world, including the COVID-19 pandemic, landslides, wildfires, and even influenza surge. Specific to Saudi Arabia, the COVID-19 pandemic, fires, the 2017 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak which was first reported in 2017 and floods, are some of the incidents that have occurred within the past five years. In the past, Saudi Arabia has seen disasters such as heavy rains, fire during hajj, Jizan floods, Jeddah floods and Rift Valley Fever outbreak. Among other disasters to look out for are technological hazards such as the breakdown of hospital equipment, disasters such as terrorist attacks and major MVCs, natural disasters like floods, rains, and epidemics. All these incidents have shown the need to constantly review and update the Emergency Operations Plan, thus the following proposal. 1.2 Purpose Statement The mission of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail is to improve people’s health in the society by providing quality health, cost-effective, and hospital services consistent with this mission. The administration, medical staff, and the Governing Body of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail have established and provided for ongoing support for an Emergency Management Program as conceived by the Hospital’s formal Emergency Management Committee. However, there is a need to review this Emergency Operations Plan and provide recommendations on how to improve it to meet the Hospital’s mission and vision better. The current EOP has not been updated for five years. There is thus, a need to assess, review, and update it since there have been various disasters, such as the ongoing novel coronavirus and the 2017 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak, that have shown the need to update the Emergency Operations Plan constantly to support pandemic illness planning. are currently required to identify outbreaks and implement effective isolation and suspected cases quickly. This requirement calls upon the need to regularly update the Emergency Operations Plan to accommodate for such emergency disasters. The purpose of this proposal for the King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail Emergency Operations Plan is thus, to define the Emergency Operations Plan, to respond effectively to disasters that pose immediate threat and danger to the safety and health of the staff, patients, and visitors. Its goal is to assemble a strong team of department representatives whose early involvement in the plan will speed up the coordination of hospital assistance to impacted areas of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail. The coordinated efforts of this team will supply and re-supply assets and resources that are necessary for meeting the urgent needs that arise from disasters. They will work to coordinate all the crisis management functions that are crucial to King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital’s restoration and recovery. This project aims to describe the response as well as the recovery process of the hospital facility from all hazards such as uncontrolled fires, earthquakes, floods as well as bombing and explosions. It entails the response to both internal emergencies, that is, situations that affect the hospital staff and patients and external disasters that disrupt the hospital environments increasing the demand for healthcare services. It will also give an outline of the need for the project, the personnel in charge of the whole emergency process, the resources and activities to be carried out as well as a description of the interaction between these activities to achieve maximum response to the emergency. Furthermore, the methodologies utilized in the project completion will also be documented. These methodologies include the conduction of interviews to look for views on the Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) used within the Hospital under study as well as the various recommendations on how it can be further improved for maximum disaster management. 1.3 Need for the Project An Emergency Operations Plan (EOP), is an essential requirement in the overall process of disaster management, as outlined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This comprehensive approach to disaster management aids in the achievement of the maximum patient and healthcare personnel safety as well as a timely return of the healthcare facility into its pre-disaster level. Its main role is to give an outline of the responses as well as the recovery process of the various healthcare facilities to all hazardous events. These disasters could affect hospitals directly by damaging the ir buildings and disruption on the essential utilities such as power, or it could result in mass effects within its surroundings hence increasing the demand for healthcare services. Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision Saudi Arabia is prone to various disasters, whichnclude both natural and man-made events. These include floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, uncontrolled fires, bombings as well as dust and sandstorms (Pararas-Carayannis, 2013). The eastern province of the country, for instance, is mainly affected by shifting dunes as well as dust storms which have a direct effect on the people living within those environments especially those suffering from lung diseases as it serves as an exacerbating factor. Dust storms also cause blurring of the environment hence reducing visibility which results in increased cases of both traffic accidents and plane crashes. This will, in turn, increase the demand for healthcare services in the healthcare facilities in that region. Bioterrorists attacks such as explosions and bombing are also prevalent in some parts of the country with some being targeted on the healthcare facilities hence affecting the healthcare personnel, patients as well as an overall disruption in the healthcare provision process. The prevalence of the above disasters in the country necessitates a well-formulated EOP within King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital. The six elements within the Joint Commission’s Emergency Management Standards should be incorporated during the document formulation. These key elements include- “communication, resources and assets, security and safety, hospital staff responsibilities, utilities as well as various clinical support activities” to facilitate the coordination of the overall response to the emergency (Canton, 2019). They are necessary as they enhance accountability and the ease of the EOP. Moreover, the various phases of the Emergency Management Cycle, including mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, should be considered during the EOP formulation. The reason for this is that these phases are vital to making plans, identifying, and providing resources to protect people from hazards. A systematic approach would be to treat each of the four actions as one phase of a comprehensive process, with each phase building on the accomplishments of the preceding one so as to achieve the overall goal of minimizing the impact caused by emergencies. The formation of the EOP should also be based on the national standards as well as a systematic analysis of the various disasters that show prevalence within the region. These two considerations, coupled with collaboration and the four phases of the emergency cycle are key for the effectiveness of an EOP. They are necessary for the achievement of the main goals and objectives of the hospital EOP, which are to ensure effective preparation and management of disasters and to restore hospital operational capacities to normalcy. The functions of the EOP include: The assignment of the various roles to the health organization, including the healthcare providers, should be carried out in the cases of emergencies exceeding their capacities. Description of how the various activities will be coordinated to achieve its goals and objectives. Description of how disaster victims will be provided with safety and security in cases of disasters. It also outlines the various property protection measures. Identification of the resources, the disaster management personnel, and the essential equipment and alternate sources for supplies to be utilized in the response and recovery process. The fulfillment of the above-outlined roles, goals, and objectives of the hospital Emergency Operations Plan substantiates the need for an effective scheme that ensures proper management and response to various health emergencies. The ultimate result of the EOP is attention to national standards, four phases of the emergency management cycle, systematic analysis of hazards, and collaboration. Together, these considerations will result in the formulation of an efficacious approach to any future emergencies thus, facilitating early prevention of their effects on disaster victims, the healthcare staff, and the overall health organization. Emergency preparedness is mandatory for numerous situations in day to day operations of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail. Without it, it would be impossible for the hospital to lessen the threat posed by emergencies. As such, it should find ways of using the resources at its disposal to prepare for and handle possible threats to the hospital, its personnel, and other people within it. According to the National Academies of Sciences (2007), an analysis of various emergencies such as tsunamis and earthquakes shows that although proper planning may be done, it is still possible not to respond to and recover from emergencies. World Health Organization Director Dr. Michael Ryan provided much-needed insight into how planning in the Emergency Operations Centers affects the proper handling of a disaster (Ryan, 2013) . The most important thing is that the success of the disaster management operations is dependent on how well prepared the organizations involved are and the level of cooperation they have (Ryan, 2013). These centers usually bring various professionals with expertise in different sectors and from different organizations that have diverse ways of handling situations. These professionals are then divided into small groups. They have to find a way to understand the current situation and work out a way of allocating the scarce resources that they have. During an emergency, a hospital is most likely already operating at full capacity, and is forced to take in more patients (Ryan, 2013). The number of beds, pharmaceutical resources, and rooms available may be limited. It is also not uncommon for the Hospital to be lacking a particular specialist who can treat various injuries (Ryan, 2013). Notably, the commonly used method of communication is verbal communication, which presents another set of challenges. The presence of conflictingcould lead to confusion which makes the situation worse (Ryan, 2013). Richard Oloruntoba, in his analysis of the challenges to plans of the 2009 Victoria bushfires, describes how those handling the disaster were distracted from the main problem and instead focused on a smaller problem that they were able to define and handle more easily. The paper also points out how training tends to focus on making people get to know how to handle and respond to a presumed threat. The primary focus here is the response to the disaster, rather than making the process an investment into the future, for instance by using previous disasters as a foreshadow and thereby being able to prepare for a wider range of challenges (Oloruntoba, 2013). After conducting a study on Finland’s disaster management, Kimmo Laakso and Jari Palomaki pointed out how poor communication can make the situation go from bad to worse when handling a disaster. The main problems identified by this paper were poor awareness of the situation and poor flow of information among those involved in disaster management. The drills in which those involved were trained also failed to function as they should have. Lack of communication at the time disaster struck and after also had consequences (Palomaki, 2013). Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision This project seeks to ensure that in the operations of hospitals, the most important philosophy of disaster management is observed: ensuring that every emergency is handed efficiently especially when considering geographical and organizational demographics. This will require improved communication systems, better planning and response of emergencies and involvement and cooperation of all the stakeholders, especially those at the local level (The Nationa academics of Sciences, 2007). This project looks at what it means for a hospital to accommodate the changing situations, occurrences and threats by updating its EOP. The project will clarify what makes hospital Emergency Operations Plans fail, and go a step further to find new ways to handle emergencies. Coordination and planning between hospitals and other important stakeholders, such as air medics to facilitate the patient transfer, will be highlighted. Ways in which those in the same region can work together to find ways of dealing with sudden increases in capacity includes training, to familiarize personnel with their responsibilities and to acquire the skills needed to perform assigned tasks. Training, tailored towards personnel roles when effectively responding to emergencies, should give thought to the future and how mistakes made in previous emergencies can be avoided as well as the provision of important and scarce resources such as personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals. When we look at the training of hospital personnel to deal with disasters, a lot of progress has been made over the years, but we need to look into new methods that can ensure the training is standardized and the environment in which it is undertaken is open to further education and expansion (The Nationa academics of Sciences, 2007). Looking into Emergency Operations Plans especially in hospitals, is very important because if a tragedy occurs, be it natural or human-made, this plan could be what determines the extent to which individual lives in the community will be affected. Although some research has been done in this area, very little focuses on the medical field. As highlighted above, there are numerous challenges faced when individuals who don’t normally work together have to do so and often; such situations are unplanned. Given the seriousness of the task they are assigned, it is important that the planning and the systems they use work extremely well and that is what this research paper is hoping to facilitate. 2 Literature Review 2.1 Introduction Emergency management has been attributed to being among the most critical departments in any organization that deals with and avoids risks, especially those that have catastrophic repercussions for regions, communities, and entire countries (National Research Council; Mapping Science Committee, 2007). Emergency management denotes the dynamic process of preparing for, mitigating, reacting to, and recovering from an emergency. The concept deals with the coordination and administration of the resources and activities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies. The primary aim of emergency management is to minimize the harmful impact of all hazards, encompassing disasters. The section provides a comprehensive overview of the emergency operations plan, its phases, elements, and the process of creating an emergency response plan. 2.2 Components of Emergency Operations Plan An Emergency Operations Plan is an evolving process considering that it is regularly updated to accommodate the continuously changing situations, occurrences and threats. In particular, recovery efforts are important, and thus getting employees back into the building safely, communicating restrictions, and inviting qualified vendors to repair any physical damages must happen quickly. Adini and Goldberg (2006) reveal that there are various components of the emergency response plan comprising planning, training, drills, and coordination. Other elements include communication, education, and technology (Adini & Goldberg, 2006). Planning entails working through many possible scenarios as all unexpected events should be considered during the development of the Emergency Operations Plan. Training involves conducting both situational and classroom training to help the emergency response team to become confident, informed, and prepared. Moreover, integrators responsible for installing emergency systems should actively engage in educating security and management on the need for efficient and accurate use of the installed systems. Moreover, coordination is a critical component that minimizes conflicts between individual plans and systems, especially in buildings where there are multi-tenant organizations. The approach is crucial in minimizing confusion during an emergency (Adini & Goldberg, 2006). 2.3 The Mission Area of Emergency Operations Planning In their research, Huss et al., state that organization and emergency management provide a comprehensive analysis of ways in which information and trust attribute to the level of organizational preparedness for disasters. In their study, the investigators interviewed and examined data on 227 organizations in Memphis. They analyzed data to assess the extent to which these organizations used hazard-related insights to make relevant decisions. The overwhelming majority of the organizations agreed that the information from these hazard-related insights were both relevant and adequate (Huss, Sadiq, & Weible, 2012). Moreover, organizations under investigation were also asked to identify their sources of information which they trusted for assisting them in the preparation of disaster. The results reveal that more than half of organizations in the region depended on the data for disaster management and that it was sufficient and effective. The researchers further identified the various phases of emergency response planning which comprised mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Mitigation is considered the most inexpensive technique for minimizing the impacts of disasters. It involves the identification of risks and the evaluation of hazards. Therefore, the higher the risk, the more crucial the need to recognize disaster-specific threats through elimination attempts. Preparedness is the second phase and encompass intermittent cycle of planning, organizing, equipping, exercising, evaluation, training and improvement activities that allow an organization or Hospital to ensure effective management and the improvement of efforts to deter, and safeguard, react to, and hence recover from disaster events (Huss, Sadiq, & Weible, 2012). 2.4 The Process of Hazard Emergency Preparedness Ncube and Chimenya (2016), on the other hand, studied hazard emergency preparedness at Onandjokwe Lutheran Healthcare in Namibia, Africa. The investigators used both qualitative and quantitative research techniques and about 120 people participated in the study with a response rate of 75%. The study focused on analyzing the features of the hospital’s disaster system against the current procedure in the healthcare organization. In particular, the results affirmed a moderate insight into the actions and efforts to react to crises comprising disease outbreaks. Furthermore, it was ascertained that positive attempts in threat preparedness were being integrated. Nevertheless, the process needed readjustment, particularly in the lanes of training, infrastructure alignment, and revisions to ensure the process is effective and relevant. The researchers provided a detailed process involved in the Hosp ital’s disaster emergency preparedness encompassing developing policy, examining vulnerability, planning for emergencies, training, and educating in addition to monitoring and evaluation (Ncube & Chimenya, 2016). Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision Specifically, policy development is the first step and focuses on establishing long-term goals by assigning tasks, recommending work practices, and determining criteria for decision-making. Vulnerability examination follows the policy development step and involves the identification and prioritization of possible hazards impacting communities and offers a foundation for the recovery approaches. Organizations or hospitals can then make informed decisions on which risks to prioritize based on the limited available resources. The next step is planning for disasters. Upon the development of policies and assessment of vulnerabilities, having a response plan is critical in ensuring an effective and efficient response during an emergency. The preparedness plan consists of the identification of potential emergency shelters, evacuation frameworks and routes, training of personal for responding to the hazard as well as command and communication procedures. In their research, Ncube and Chimenya, (2016) clarified that an Emergency Operations Plan should comprise an agreed-upon set of activities that can be used to prepare for, react to, and recover from emergencies. Training and education are also a crucial step in the emergency management process. The phase encompasses equipping the emergency team, empowering communities, and allowing them to engage in developing the emergency management strategies and creating awareness on various types of hazards and where to seek help (Ncube & Chimenya, 2016). 2.5 Challenges Associated with Emergency Operations Plans Karagiannis and Synolakis (2017) substantiate the claims that disasters result in overwhelming and unprecedented demands to affected societies and thus pose inherent challenges that seem to complicate efforts reinforcing the response. The investigators delved into the observation of 50 disaster activities whereby they recognized 20 crucial points in Emergency Operation Planning which require improvements. As evidenced in numerous works of literature, it is in such an environment of complexities, uncertainty, and time-constraints that EOP managers are expected to create incident plans that address the various demands that are challenging for emergency managers thereby poorly implementing the plans (Karagiannis & Synolakis, 2017). The researchers sampled the most complex components of Emergency Operations Planning, which constitute collecting of information from the field, response-generated demands, running approximates of the incident, and mobilization time and resource capabilities. Other issues comprise decision-making under tension and uncertainty and course of action development and examination. The study further identified several good practices of incident planning which included the fact that the process was iterative, and the planners revisited various steps in a back and forth approach. Other good practices comprised intuitive and rational decision-making process being used during the occurrence of the incidence and the production of better plans when flexibility is integrated into the course of action to solve the expected developments of the issues or in the decision-making scenarios (Karagiannis & Synolakis, 2017). 2.6 Recommendation: Best Practices of EOPs As evidenced in the literature, planning for hazards, events, and threats have a substantial impact on access to, and provision of healthcare services to the society. Hospitals have been subjected to various requirements to ensure that they are adequately planning for emergencies. Therefore, the emergency management program (EMP) should outline the process of implementing emergency management guidelines of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Moreover, the program should state the relevant authorities and initiative management and administration. Hospital system planners should ensure the EMP is modified to integrate the current and changing framework of requirements, threats, regulations, and hazards. In particular, adhering to standards will assist the Hospital and other organizations to adequately and effectively react to and recover from hazards in addition to cohesively working with emergency management stakeholders. Therefore, the plan created should be inclusive and must be in line with the local EOPs for information sharing and resource requests (World Health Organization (WHO), 2017). To develop all-hazard plans, the planning process should include all engagement by all involved hospital parties considering that effective planning ensures that the entire community is involved and represented in the planning procedure. The approach can be attributed to the fact that the most complete and logical plans are developed by a diverse planning group encompassing representatives from all hospital departments. Involving the community through representatives and community leaders empowers the society by reinforcing the expectations that the community has a shared responsibility and strengthens the public morale to plan for themselves and their organizations. It is also critical for the planning team to consider the flexibility element associated with the plan which should be able to address both conventional and catastrophic events. This can be done through scalable planning solutions that are likely to be executed and understood correctly by the planning personnel. Consequently, planners should test if the crucial components are adequately flexible by exercising them against possible events of varying magnitude and type (World Health Organization (WHO), 2017). Emergency Operations Plan King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital Revision 3 Method 3.1 Participants The target population in this study were within the hospital setting of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Jubail. This setting was ideal since the goal of the study was to revise and update the EOP of King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital to better respond to and recover from emergencies. Purposeful recruiting was used to identify and confirm the participation of emergency management coordinators have realistic insight, knowledge, and familiarity of the emergency management activities of the hospital, which also extends to strategy implementation and hazard mitigation planning. The resulting 37 participants, comprised of the hospital management including the Hospital Director, the Disaster Coordinator, the medical and the nursing director. The contact information of the participants were obtained from the emergency management office. A chain-referral technique was then used to identify additional practitioners initially not identified using the purposeful recruiting method. These participants were however, not compensated since the budget was not available for true compensation. However, token of appreciations in the form of gift cards and gift certificates were given to the participants. 3.2 Materials One of the materials that was used in the study was questionnaires that were constructed by the researcher. The questionnaires consisted of two parts. The first part of this phase focused on the demographic characteristics of the people who answered the survey questions. These characteristics include age, gender, their exact role, and the duration they have worked in the hospital. The second part of the questionnaire was made up of questions regarding the risk issues within the hospital, such as the availability of disaster managers, the types of resources devoted for disaster management, the hospital’s overall level of disaster preparedness, and the challenges faced in the implementation of the disaster management plans. The second section culminated in a question that asked the respondents to provide a recommendation for improving the current EOP of King King Abdulaziz Naval Base Armed Forces Hospital. Audit reports and surveys were also used to help in the construction of interview questions for the participants. 3.3 Procedure As shown in Figure 3.1, this study’s research process is divided into four distinctive procedures: instructions to participants, ethical considerations, data collection and data analysis. This