Comprehensive Guide to Emergency and Evacuation Procedures in Health Care Facilities (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: This presentation covers the basic concepts of emergency and evacuation procedures in health care facilities and would also help EVS personnel understand the health care emergency management philosophy. This course is designed to give employees the skills and understanding of emergency response safety, so you can minimize the risk of injury and maximize safety compliance. This video will help you develop your skills and response time. You are an important factor in providing a safe work environment and a successful and efficient operation. We can define an emergency in a hospital as an unexpected event that disrupts organizational ability to provide proper patient care. Hospitals take very seriously the duty to provide a safe and healthy environment for patients, staff, and visitors. Currently, hospitals are required to have an Emergency Operations Plan, also known as EOP, which describes how a facility will respond to and recover from all hazards. The following items should be considered when developing a list of possible hazards. Natural disasters, such as high wind events, like tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, snow or ice storms, earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, volcanoes. Human events, such as internal building fire, mass casualty incident, external hazmat exposure, biological or chemical terrorism, hostage situations, labor action, internal flood, internal hazmat exposure, bomb threat. Technological events, such as communications failure, electrical failure, generator failure, water failure, fire alarm failure, med gas failure. The Emergency Operations Plan describes a comprehensive all-hazards command structure for coordinating the six critical areas of communications, resources and assets, safety and security, staffing, utilities, and clinical activities. Hospital emergency codes are used in hospitals to alert staff to various emergencies. The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with minimal misunderstanding to the staff, while preventing stress and panic among visitors to the hospital. The hospital takes action to minimize potential for harm from fire, smoke, and other products of combustion. The potential for fire can occur from many different sources, such as non-flame resistant materials, such as bedding or curtains used at the facility. The Fire Response Plan concentrates on preventing fires and minimizing their impact. This plan includes specific roles of staff, sounding alarms, importance of containing fire and smoke, using fire extinguishers properly, evacuating the area of refuge, conducting fire drills. Portable fire extinguishers are classified by fire type. The number in front of the A, B, or C indicates the rating size of the fire the unit can extinguish. Fire extinguishers with a Class A rating are effective against fires involving paper, wood, textiles, and plastics. Fire extinguishers with a Class B rating are effective against flammable liquid fires. These can be fires where cooking liquids, oil, gasoline, kerosene, or paint have become ignited. Fire extinguishers with a Class C rating are suitable for fires in live electrical equipment. An active shooter is defined as an individual who is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in the hospital or on the hospital campus. In most cases, active shooters use a firearm and display no pattern or method for selection of their victims. In some cases, active shooters use other weapons and or improvised explosive devices. Dial 911 if possible to alert police to the active shooter's location. If you cannot speak, leave the line open and allow the dispatcher to listen.