Reference no: EM133244007
Case Study - I had been at this medical center for only 4 weeks when 18 tornadoes hit the state and devastated the surrounding area. Over 100 patients were brought into the emergency room, which initiated our emergency disaster plan. In addition, a local newspaper advised us that an airplane had crashed at the local airport with 200 people aboard. This led us to bring in more physicians, residents, and employees. However, we eventually found out that the information from the news media was incorrect-there was no plane crash-and we would not receive the additional large number of patients. Fortunately, we lost only 1 of the over 100 patients that came to our emergency room. We now had a somewhat unusual problem. We had too many people in the medical center. There were too many physicians, residents, and employees who, basically, did not want to leave. These additional people slowed things down, and we probably were not as efficient and effective as we would have been with the appropriate number of people that we would bring in during an emergency. We did let as many staff and physicians go as soon as we could, so they could deal with any damage the tornadoes might have inflicted on their homes or other property. This was considered to be one of the major disasters in the history of the state, and to this day is the worst natural disaster.
Case Study Questions -
1. Describe how you would evaluate your medical center's disaster plan. How would you determine whether to bring in additional employees?
2. How would you deal with the newspaper that had misinformed you? What steps would you take with the media's management that would hopefully prevent such significant misinformation from being transferred to the medical center in the future?
3. Describe what your learning experience would be from being involved in initiating a disaster plan responding to a major catastrophe. What lessons would you gain?