Nursing Assignment Paper On Public Health Preparedness (Term Paper Sample)

Public Health Preparedness: A Proposal Report Addressing Terrorism Threats
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Procedures Related to the Ten Essential Health Services
As the terrorism threat cases increase in the United States, the government has played a significant role to manage any act of terrorism (Gareau, 2004). According to Gareau (2004), one of the major steps taken by the government of the United States include enacting of various Laws against any act of terrorism. The Laws that are made in the parliament provide a clear platform for reference when convicting the terrorists. Moreover, the Laws in the United States have outlined relevant policies that empower organs of the public sector to mitigate emergencies including the terrorism emergencies (Gareau, 2004). Public health sector being a subsidiary of the national government operates under the policies within the jurisdiction of the law (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). Therefore, the public health providers ought to adhere to the government policies in order to earn recognition, accreditation and credibility in provision of health services to the community (Frumkin, 2016).
Fundamentally, public health policies provide a room for emergency preparedness. The emergency could be of any sort including the terrorism threats. Hence, as a leader of a public health facility, one ought to adopt the emergency preparedness policies to mitigate and respond to the disaster at hand. Clear strategies and measures should be outlined to safeguard the health and lives of the people. Additionally, proper measures should be put in place to protect the public health infrastructure such as patients’ records among many others. This paper is a proposal that describes the procedures that could be adopted to prepare for the terrorism emergency.
According to the well-known ten essential public health services of the United States, it is a core role of all the public health facilities to monitor health status of the people to identify and solve all health problems (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). Health facilities are also expected to diagnose and investigate health hazards and problems in the community. Educating, informing and empowering people about health issues is another service that public health facilities should offer to the general public. It is also vital for public health facilities to mobilize community partnership in attempt to identify and solve health issues or problems facing the community. The public health providers are mandated to develop policies as well as enforcing laws and regulations to safeguard community health and safety. Lastly, the management of the public health facility should ensure that the workforce in the health sector comprise of competent workers (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015).
According to some of the above essential public health services, the healthcare should first mobilize the community to respond on the terrorism emergency (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). Specifically, the healthcare should mobilize the community to donate blood prior to the impending terrorism threat. Since terrorism attack could result to severe injuries of the people, the healthcare should have enough blood in its blood bank. The collected blood could be donated to the casualties of the terrorism attack. By collecting enough blood in advance, the healthcare will save lives and also time. To achieve this procedure, the healthcare could fetch blood from schools and advertise through media platforms that they require more blood in its blood bank.
Secondly, the management of the healthcare should ensure that its workforce consist of competent workers (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). Prior to the terrorism attack, the management should provide relevant training to workers on how to handle terrorism casualties. Health workers must be equipped with skills that could save lives of the community. In particular, the management should assess whether its workers have deep experience in using some medical equipment in the laboratory. Additionally, the management should assess the skills of the workers responsible for managing medical records. The management should ensure that medical record system is not vulnerable to cybercrimes. The healthcare workers should back up files on daily basis. Fire-fighting workers should also be trained on how to use fire extinguishers in the event of fire. By ensuring that workers are competent and skilled, the healthcare will be in a position to protect its infrastructure and property from fire. Moreover, this will save lives.
Thirdly, the healthcare should arrange educational programs to inform and educate the community about terrorism attacks. The community should have some knowledge that could help them protect their own lives. First Aid skills should be impacted to the community prior to the emergency (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). The healthcare should educate the community about fire-fighting techniques. This program will be significant to the healthcare since it could reduce the number of causalities taken to the hospital. As such, the program could save the cost of attending to the casualties during the emergency.
Lastly, the healthcare should enforce laws and regulations that ensure safety (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015). In regard to terrorism threats, the healthcare ought to enforce laws that heighten security within the perimeters of this facility. As such surveillance systems could play a significant role to mitigate the impeding terrorism attack. The entrance to the healthcare compound should be manned heavily by security guards. Regulations controlling the manner in which visitors enter and exit the healthcare should be enforced by the security guards. By deploying enough security measures within the healthcare compound, the healthcare will have safeguarded the lives and safety of its patients. In addition, the terrorists could have a little room to interfere with the operations of the healthcare.
Importance of Continually Evaluating Patients during the Emergency
According to Zun (2013), it is important to continue evaluating patients during the emergency as required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). This act was enacted by Congress in 1986 to prevent the public health providers from transferring patients before they stabilize the emergency condition (Zun, 2013). This act also requires the public health attenders to provide emergence treatment to all patients regardless of their ability to pay for the services. Additionally, specific obligations are imposed in section 1867 of the Social Security Act that demand healthcare practitioners to provide medical screening examinations (MSE) when requested to examine a patient suffering from emergency medical condition (EMC). All public healthcare are expected to treat a patient with emergency medical condition until the patient stabilizes (Zun, 2013). However, if a public healthcare provider fails to stabilize a patient with emergency medical condition, within its full capacity, then the law permits the healthcare to transfer the patient to another hospital. Zun (2013) argues that the law also allows a healthcare practitioner to transfer a patient on the grounds of patient requests.
Measures for Maintaining an Electronic Medical System during the Emergency
The United States federal government have done a commendable job by placing regulations that demand healthcare providers to transition from paper record keeping to medical electronic system (Field, 2007). The federal regulations stipulate that healthcare providers should comply with privacy and security guidelines during the transition and implementation process (Field, 2007). During an emergency such a system could be vulnerable to security threats. Hence, measures ought to be put in place to maintain and ensure a smooth running of an electronic medical system.
The first measure would involve backing up information contained in the electronic medical record (Goel, 2014). Most electronic systems including medical systems provide a feature for backing up data and another feature for restoring the same data. Backing up patients’ information will mean creating another copy of what we already have in the system (Goel, 2014). Hence, in the event of an emergency, the backed up data could be used reliably and effectively during the operations of the healthcare. With the help of online storage service, some backed up data could be stored on portable media such as flash drives or on the cloud. Cloud services providers could store the information in the electronic medical system on behalf of the healthcare providers (Goel, 2014). The healthcare practitioners will require internet only to connect with their information that is stored on the cloud.
The second measure involves the use of audit trails (Goel, 2014). The audit trails help to keep logs of the activities happening in the electronic medical system. In most electronic systems, the audit trails associate the users of the system at a given time with all the executed activities. The implementation of audit trails will serve to help in the identification of security malpractice (Goel, 2014). This could also help to spot the user who tampered with the system. The audit trail could help in gathering evidence for convicting a criminal who might have hacked the system. The implementation of this feature in the electronic medical system could limit the number of users using the system at a given time. Hence, increasing the security, accountability and reliability of the system (Goel, 2014).
Thirdly, I would create policies concerning the usage and access of the electronic medical system. The policies w...