Team Reach Out Biloxi is a nursing student-initiated service-learning project with the goal of providing ongoing assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. On 6 different occasions from 2005 to 2008, Purdue nursing students integrated their leadership skills with application of public health knowledge, compassion, and concern as they worked in partnership with the Gulfport region Coastal F...

BACKGROUND It is widely accepted in many parts of the world thatcommunity nurses are of vital importance in various phases of disaster response and management. In China, however, it is not clear whether the Chinese community nurses are able to assume disaster-related duties due to the lack of a systematic assessment. METHODS A pre-designed and well-tested questionnaire was employed to evaluat...

Introduction Education and training are the cornerstones of disaster preparedness and best curricula and training programs are competency-based. Objective This paper presents a proposal to be applied in nursing curricula in Brazil, based on the National Curriculum Guidelines and the recommendations for integrating skills and competencies into undergraduate curricula proposed by the World Health...

Emergency planning for vulnerable populations constitutes a major element of community disaster preparedness and is an area in which guidance is particularly sparse. As evidenced by the well-publicized deaths of nursing home residents following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the need to improve nursing home emergency preparedness is self-evident. Nevertheless, as efforts to improve preparedness d...

Catastrophic mass casualty events (MCEs), such as pandemic influenza outbreaks, earthquakes, or large-scale terrorism-related events, quickly and suddenly yield thousands of victims whose needs overwhelm local and regional health care systems, personnel, and resources. Such conditions require deploying scarce resources in a manner that is different from the more common multiple casualty event. ...

Susan Briggs is an attending general and trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is also the commanding officer for IMSURT East. A disaster is a catastrophic event that often leads to great destruction and loss. Logue defines a disaster as an event that causes excessive morbidity and mortality. Extensive damage to property, roadways, electrical lines, and other crucial i...

INTRODUCTION While many hospitals have developed preliminary emergency department and in-patient surge plans, the ability to surge is often limited by critical resources. The resource which is often the most limited is usually the human resource and within this category the limiting factor is almost universally nursing. As a result, nursing shortages can result in an inability of a hospital or ...