Emergency Preparedness

As health care professionals you may be involved in Emergency/Disaster planning and action. This activity will explore various types of disasters that may occur and investigate the varied roles that pharmacy technicians and pharmacist may play, along with other health professionals.

QUESTION: Natural disasters
Examples: floods, heat waves, winter storms, etc

Emergency management planning teams look at four different phases in emergency preparedness: (Landesman, 2009)
1. Mitigation
2. Preparedness
3. Response
4. Recovery

Determine the exact type of disaster and their place of practice (eg. Community or Hospital)

1. Mitigation
- Is there a role for the pharmacy technician in the mitigation of this type of disaster?
2. Preparedness
- What is the role of the pharmacy in preparing for this type of disaster? In particular, the role of the pharmacy technician.
- What planning should the pharmacy prepare for? Eg. Professional skills, basic medical skills, working without technology
- Is there a role for pharmacy technician to play in helping patients/families prepare, just in case?
- Emergency supplies for an individual/family?
3. Response
- What will be the pharmacy response during this disaster?
- What is the impact on the community pharmacy/hospital pharmacy?
- Will an evacuation be required? Your role as a pharmacy techncian?
- Consider equipment and supplies needed?
- Will you need access to medical records?
- What supportive roles could you play? Consider triage, distribution roles, personal protective equipment, isolation procedures etc.
4. Recovery
- After the initial emergency has passed, how will the pharmacy technician be involved in the recovery process?
- During an actual disaster, you may be working side by side with many other health and non health professionals. List those that you might be working with and briefly state their role(s). See how many other professionals you can list. This will be presented to the class. Be creative and