So, how do we, as healthcare professionals, practice our emergency management roles and responsibilities, especially in the realm of The Joint Commission’s Emergency Management Standards? One best practice technique is to have an exercise that examines our capabilities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a hurricane event. Moreover, by following Homeland Security’s Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) methodology for exercise design and development, exercise planners have a platform for successful outcomes to an exercise. Hospital emergency managers and hospital planners, clinical and administrative alike, through HSEEP guidance, can find the tools and strategies to successfully navigate through the design for their hurricane exercise. By using this guidance, hospital planners can access a national, systematic, and common methodology for exercise program administration, focused design and development, exercise evaluation guides, compliance based improvement planning, improvement item prioritization, oversight tracking, and exercise program management.

 

The overall success of a hurricane exercise will be primarily based on the support and direct participation of hospital leadership. This support is important because leadership is responsible for ensuring budgetary assistance, facilitating internal communications to hospital staff, and championing each department’s hurricane exercise activities. Exercise planners need to design and develop their hurricane exercise through the explicit examination of capabilities, goals, and objectives. Such an approach is fundamental, and critical, to a focused examination of the hospital’s capabilities as they relate to resiliency and continuity of operations during and after a hurricane event.

 

Exercise evaluation is fundamental to discovery of areas for improvement. Carefully designed evaluations must be laser focused on the nuances contained in each capability selected by the exercise planners. Ideally, the capability selections must have associated tasks and target areas of operations. Along with this concept of exercise, evaluation is that of training exercise evaluators. Evaluators must be intimately involved throughout the entire exercise planning process in order to be familiar with what they need to be observing and evaluating. They also need to be able to accurately record and analyze their observations and to tie their observations back to policies and plans that delineate or contain the capability being examined.

 

Lastly, The Joint Commission Emergency Management Standards specifically address that compliance to Elements of Performance involves documented improvement planning, prioritization, and tracking. Ideally, this is accomplished through the Emergency Management Committee. It is essential that all activities by the Emergency Management Committee in this regard be reviewed and approved by hospital leadership.

 

An essential factor for a successful hurricane exercise program is the involvement and oversight of not only the hospital leadership and support in the conduct of the exercise program, but also by that of the Emergency Management Committee. This leadership not only is the responsibility of these two groups but also that of hospital Program Administrators, Supervisors and front-line hospital staff. We are all stakeholders in this endeavor. Successful exercise outcomes lead to resiliency. Resiliency leads to essential support for our communities. Support for our communities leads to recovery and a return to normalcy.