Culture of Safety and Preparedness: Benefits of Applying a Daily Mitigation Mindset in the Hospital Setting.

AIM: Utilizing the subjective experience of nurse executives who have supervised nurses during a major disaster in a hospital setting, this study aims to describe the subjective experience of nurse executives (NE) who have supervised nurses' responses to major disasters. This paper will focus on strategies to support nursing response to disasters, specifically to strengthen resiliency and the ability to maintain function despite the shock of a disaster, including those caused by climate change. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 hospital-based nurse executives who supervised nurses during some of the worst natural and human-made disasters in different regions of the United States. A phenomenological approach was used to analyze and describe emerging themes from the qualitative data. RESULTS: Three nurse executives demonstrated theme saturation for mitigation steps to augment traditional disaster readiness activities: (1) Assessment of human infrastructure: daily skills needed during disaster response; (2) Identification and study of failure points and metrics; (3) Strengthening human infrastructure: rectifying deficiencies; and (4) Monitoring metrics and making corrections during conventional periods. CONCLUSION: Mitigation steps may improve outcomes in hospital function during conventional times; therefore, these steps may improve resiliency and the ability to maintain functions during major disasters, including climate change.

Qualitative Analysis of the Lived Experience of First-Time Nurse Responders in Disaster.

The study purpose was to examine the reflections of the lived experiences of nurses in shelters or temporary community medical clinics responding for the first time to a civilian disaster. The disaster-nursing literature echoes the need for development of disaster content in the nursing curriculum. However, little thematic analysis-supporting curriculum from the lived experience of first-time responders exists in the literature. This study's purpose is to identify the essential thematic knowledge and skills necessary to provide care to disaster survivors in communities and for determining the themes necessary to formulate education in emergency preparedness curricula. A narrative inquiry, with a phenomenological analysis, to explore the lived experiences of nurses who responded once to a community disaster was the methodology used to identify themes. Thematic findings demonstrated a lack of prior knowledge about volunteering during a disaster response, that previous mass casualty exercises did not help with their actual responses, and that the participant RNs identified specific and assessment skills necessary for disasters.