Is your hospital ready for a natural or man-made disaster

Abstract

Disasters that impact a hospital can be internal or external and may be natural or man-made. Natural disasters are earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods. Man-made disasters can be the result of industrial accidents, train wrecks, or terrorist's activities. The hospital engineers including clinical engineers should develop an emergency management plan to prepare for these potential disasters. They need to consider not only patients, but staff and the community. The plan needs to address power outages, water outages, gas outages, facility structure, communications and keeping the facility from contamination. Contamination of the facility is a real possibility when patients arrive from industrial accidents or terrorist's activities. The engineers and the clinical staff need to work together to develop the plan and conduct drills of the plan. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.