Disaster response: the University of Texas School of Nursing experience

Nurses comprise the largest group of health-care providers and should be key partners for any disaster response in their community. An often untapped resource in many communities is the contingent of nurse faculty, staff and students in schools of nursing across the country. In an effort to provide guidance on how schools and colleges of nursing link with their community and provide real-world experience for students, the present paper: (i) outlines how a Memorandum of Cooperation between the City of Austin and the University of Texas at Austin was created; and (ii) describes an example of how a school of nursing could become organized to respond to a community's call for help.