“When asked if I would be one of the 16 chapter authors, I accepted right away,” Taylor said. “My chapter is on the keys to successful disaster response. Hospitals are faced with challenges due to disasters and I wanted to offer some simple practical steps to help readers in preparedness and response.”
“Getting It Done” provides real-life examples and recommendations for health care professionals on how to react to disruptive challenges. Taylor applies his experiences from the disasters in Haiti and on the Gulf Coast to help health care leaders plan for an uncertain future.
“In some respects, disasters are simply our day jobs under far more stress,” he said. “However, disasters put health care professionals under a tremendous burden to manage far more patients without the things we take for granted such as working phones, full power to run diagnostics, supplies and other tools.”
“The chapter was several months in the drafting in part because it’s based upon experiences in disaster response, and as a disaster occurs we learn or at least observe more,” Taylor said. “Even now if I were writing the chapter again, I would add some of the wonderful stories we have seen from the hospitals in Alabama impacted by the tornadoes of late April.”
The Center for Strategic Health Innovation also runs the Advanced Regional Response Training Center (ARRTC), a federally funded disaster response program housed on USA’s campus.
“Through ARRTC, we have trained more than 8,000 health care professionals over the past seven years,” Taylor said. “‘Getting It Done’ is really a compilation of our teaching. More importantly it is a compilation of the stories of our attendees, many of whom have worked in the health care field for numerous hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and oil spills.”
For more information visit http://www.ncdmr.org/.
