Assessing surge capacity expansion plan awareness and attitudes: A survey of Connecticut hospitals.

This study aimed to ascertain levels of awareness and attitudes of healthcare professionals within four hospital personnel categories, regarding their facility's surge capacity expansion plan. The exploratory descriptive study used a 14-question electronic survey to collect data from hospital personnel in four labour categories. A total of 292 hospital staff from 32 Connecticut hospitals completed the survey, including executive staff mid-level management staff incident command hospital staff and emergency planning contacts. The strongest levels of agreement were found to be: the need for an emergency planning contact, understanding surge expansion roles and responsibilities, and provision of enhanced training and heightened participation in drills and exercises. Statistical significance was found when comparing hospital personnel categories in seven of the 14 survey questions that related to time at hospital, understanding personal role in surge event, understanding staff role in surge event, participating in events to increase surge awareness, understanding alternative care facility roles and responsibilities, understanding incident command system (ICS) roles and responsibilities and the needfor ICS training. Findings demonstrate that some personnel perceive that their institutions are sub-optimally prepared to expand surge capacity. Education and training are important factors that contribute to improving these perceptions and help guide institutional preparedness and response efforts.

Summary of the current operational epidemiological modelling landscape.

Through the National Center for Integrated Civilian-Military Domestic Disaster Medical Response, the Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response and US Northern Command have initiated a study to determine the requirements of a national operational epidemiological modelling process. During a public health emergency, decision makers often require a variety of epidemiological information, including prospective forecasts that can be made available in the form of models. Currently, there is no formal process across US Government agencies and departments to synchronise epidemiological models with response organisations. The research presented here summarises the landscape of the modelling and consequence management communities for the purpose of informing the development of a proposed national operational epidemiological modelling process.

Disaster and exercise performance information collection tool: capturing observations in four minutes or less.

The objectives of the work described in this paper were to: (a) identify existing gaps in data collection, processing and dissemination across all types of emergencies; (b) build a tool that permits documentation, manipulation and propagation of relevant observations in emergency preparedness exercises or real-world incidents to inform critical decision makers in real time and to facilitate the elaboration of lessons learned, best practices and pioneering strategies for the management of future disasters; (c) validate the efficacy of the tool for collecting, processing and disseminating disaster-related information, through its integration in a series of exercises. The disaster and exercise performance information collection tool (DEPICT) was developed to address needs identified via the analysis of survey responses provided by representatives of military and civilian organisations with disaster response experience. Consensus discussions were held to identify criteria and operational parameters for the tool. As the development of DEPICT progressed, feedback and recommendations for improvements were provided to the developers, who incorporated the recommendations in successive iterations, resulting in increased refinements of the tool. DEPICT was subsequently tested for feasibility through operations-based exercises centred on catastrophic earthquakes in three diverse geographic locations of the USA. Feedback regarding DEPICT's functional performance during the exercises was used to inform further refinements to the program. The authors developed the DEPICT software on a PHP platform to accomplish two goals: (1) offer a core that supports user interaction and data management requirements (eg data capture, transmission and storage); (2) present a user-friendly interface with a shallow learning curve to facilitate a better user experience. DEPICT is a user-friendly, web-based application that is accessible through various mobile web-enabled devices. The application allows responders, emergency planners and exercise evaluators to capture written and photographic field observations, on average, in four minutes or less per observation. These observations may be further processed or formatted offsite by analysts, prior to their submission for final exercise performance evaluation. Ultimately, the data form the basis of after-action reports, which, in turn, underpin future decision making and improved disaster response practices.