Preparedness Training Within Hospitals For Wmd

According to the Texas Health Presbyterian Denton Emergency Operations plan their objective “is to maintain the continuity of patient care operations and meet the medical needs of our members and the community.” In order to accomplish this goal they assert that maintaining the safety and security of the organizations staff and volunteers is the top priority, as the safety of their staff ensures they will be able to accomplish their mission of providing care for patients, visitors, and the larger community. In addition to their primary goal, they have also identified a secondary objective of providing supplies and assistance to other Texas Health facilities.

“GET DOWN!.... SHHH!!!!.... GET DOWN! GET INTO A ROOM AND LOCK IT!!!!” This is the first thing our opposite crew heard as they walked into the ER with a patient last month. Should this crew have recognized the signs of an active shooter? Is walking into a hospital with an active shooter even a real concern? From 2000-2012, there were 154 hospital related shootings in the United States with 235 injuries or deaths. That’s more than 1 shooting a month. As QIC I will implement parts of the “Active Shooter Preparedness” from United States Homeland Security. Knowing exactly what Emergency Action Plans our hospitals have in place will help us know how to recognize and react to possible active shooter situations. Scene safety is constant with EMS.

From the years 1995 through 2003, I was an Air Force medic stationed in Germany. For the first five years I was an Airman at the 86 Aeromedical Staging Facility (ASF). Our mission at the ASF was to transport patients back and forth from the flight line as they traveled to and from their medical appointments from their assignments across Europe and sometimes over the Atlantic Ocean to various Medical Treatment Facilities (MTFs) located in the Continental United States (CONUS). Our daily operations were fairly routine and all of the technicians knew their assigned roles well whether they were driving a vehicle, transporting luggage or caring for traveling patients. ASF operations were fairly routine, even mundane, until 26 June 1996, a terrorist blew up a dorm filled with Air Force personnel in the Middle East called Khobar Towers.

Hospitals are places of healing, but they are also public institutions – not unlike the mall, airport or school. That opens them up to the same types of security issues that increasingly plague public environments.

It is the policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA") to create and maintain a written safety policy to help ensure accuracy of communication and accountability for results. The safety policy is outlined below is approved by the Secretary of the VA and applies to all VA facilities worldwide.

Since the beginning of aviation, aircraft have been used for other intentions besides carrying passengers and cargo. They have been used as weapons of war dating all the way back to the first world war, and the use of aircraft has enlightened the advancement of the aviation. “Throughout the history of aviation, the greatest progress in flight has been made during time when either war or the threat of war was present” (Millspaugh, et al., 2008, p. 33). However, the war we face today has been triggered by the deliberate use of aircraft to cause death, destruction, and mayhem.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2008, developed the initiative “Run, Hide, Fight” as a response strategy to an active shooter event. In the event of an active shooter they suggest run or evacuate first, if evacuation is not possible, hide and barricade doors, and as a last resort, fight back if your life is in imminent danger (DHS, 2008). All public places are vulnerable to active shooter attacks, but hospitals differ due to the vulnerability of its patients. Evacuation may not a possibility for all patients, as some may be non-ambulatory due medical conditions, or incapacitated due to anesthesia or sedation (e.g. surgical patients, ventilator dependent). Another factor increasing patient vulnerability is the patient’s ability to understand commands (e.g. Dementia, language barriers). In order to establish effective preparedness strategies, they should be tailored to the hospital environment and specific units (Cormier, 2016; Jacobs et al., 2017).

The agency coordinated with the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise to assist in the outbreak of the Ebola Virus in West Africa. The agency recognized without its help, the virus could grow out of control. Their swift medical actions and state-of-the-art technology assisted in keeping that epidemic under control. Consequence management is one of the very pillars in which the agency represents. Foreign consequence management experts were in Japan a few hours after the nuclear reactor disaster to provide assistance. Elimination experts were sent to Libya to destroy WMD stockpiles that were left exposed in 2014. DTRA will always provide expertise and the necessary support of a global, theater and tactical level to ensure the threat is eliminated. DTRA provides our warfighters with a contact to the operations center. The operations center provides the opportunity to speak with EOD experts, chemical engineers, nuclear physicists, meteorologist, and other experts available to advise on the

Title 18 U.S.C. 2332a, WMD refers to any material, weapon, or devices that are intended to cause, or is capable of causing death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or precursors, a disease organism, or radiation or radioactivity, including (but not limited to) biological devices, chemical devices, improvised nuclear devices, radiological dispersion devices, and radiological exposure devices. (WMD, 2016).

Communication is essential between health care facilities and the CDC. For example, the facilities experience an emergency and follow certain quarantine protocols and alert the local public health department and the CDC. The CDC organizes secure transmission tactics to merge and notify public health officials at local, state, and federal levels. The institute deploys scientific and logistical proficiency, personnel, and vital medical resources to the area of the emergency. The CDC (2012) explains the implementation of the essential medical assets for protection of communities in the state of an emergency:

Urban Shield has grown into a preparedness training for prevention, protection, response and recovery in a high-threat and busy urban area. Many people are becoming more and more against the urban shield program, however I think it’s a necessary training program to implement within local law enforcement agencies. It trains law enforcement and the sheriff’s office to prepare for terrorist threats, and how they can respond to threats or attacks without use of the military force. With the numerous events going on in today’s world with alleged attacks from terrorist groups like ISIS to not only the US but to other countries in the world, Urban Shield highly prepares law enforcement to respond to threats. Nobody expected those sudden attacks in

Not one entity should or can claim sole accountability for the multifaceted range of challenges related with disasters and emergencies like active shooters. Public health nurses team up with other experts, such as laboratory workers environmentalists, physicians, epidemiologists and social workers during times of emergency. In the scenario of an active shooter the public health nurse, is to work together with other emergency workers to improve the emergency response, which include but is not limited to, officers, Federal agents, hospital security and ambulance workers. According to the Department of Homeland Security, every public health nurse should be able to locate and be familiar with the contents of the emergency response plan before an emergency occurs (US Department of Homeland Security, 2006). Chain of command is also important during the times of crisis. “Each public health nurse needs to be familiar with and be able to describe the lines of authority and communication in emergency response, a command chain that is based on the Incident Command System” (OSHA, 2001) Even though public health nurses can work in many competences, they are more likely to be functioning in the role of the “operations section” because they bring

In the article “Know the Smells and Warning Bells of WMD”, the author, John Linstrom’s principal point is that the fire departments should better prepare to respond to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Historically, explosive or WMD incidents were handled by law enforcement, while fire assumed a support role, but with increased terroristic occurrences, firefighters have been finding themselves in situations where they have been first on scene. Mr. Linstrom stresses that firefighters need to be mindful of the threat of explosives and WMD’s when responding to incidents (Linstrom, 2004). Firefighters need to familiarize themselves with terrorist tactics and beware of potential high-risk

1. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States sought to improve relations between local, state, and federal agencies. This effort resulted in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with support from NIMS to develop the National Preparedness Goal. In a minimum of 200 words identify the five mission areas of the National Preparedness Goals and the mission of each goal.

Thorough this further oral activity, analyzing one of the NEDA's campaigns, I came to a much greater understanding of eating disorders, especially exercise bulimia and how those issues can be presented to the public eye in order to raise awareness and prevent further problems. NEDA is the national eating disorders association based in US, which is a non-profit organization that helps people fight against different eating disorders and raises awareness. Finding one of their campaigns online, it really caught my attention, which is one of the reasons why I decided to analyze their campaign. Another important reason was having a friend who went through an eating disorder and by who's side I was, meaning that it is a very