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A Pediatric-Focused Self-Assessment Tool on Vulnerabilities to Aid Regional Disaster Planning
Michelle Pintea1, Deanna Dahl Grove2
1Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis Children's Hospital, Saint Louis, MO, USA.
Insights
Hospitals often lack pediatric disaster preparedness. A new self-assessment tool helps regions evaluate and improve care for children and families during emergencies, enhancing community resilience.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric emergency medicine
- Public health preparedness
- Healthcare systems resilience
Background:
- Children represent a significant portion of disaster victims, yet many hospitals are inadequately prepared for pediatric mass casualty incidents.
- The National Pediatric Readiness Project highlighted deficiencies in hospital pediatric disaster plans.
- The Region V for Kids Center of Excellence developed a tool to address these gaps in pediatric disaster care.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce a self-assessment tool designed to help regions identify vulnerabilities in pediatric disaster preparedness.
- To provide a method for enhancing the care of vulnerable children and families during emergencies.
- To support healthcare coalitions in evaluating and improving their pediatric disaster response capabilities.
Main Methods:
- Identified 9 key domains crucial for safeguarding children's and families' care during disasters.
- Developed a self-assessment tool focusing on 3 domains with accessible open-source data.
- Distributed the tool and a usefulness survey to 24 regional healthcare coalitions.
Main Results:
- Achieved a 50% response rate from the distributed surveys.
- Approximately 40% of respondents expressed likelihood to implement changes based on the tool's findings.
- The initial self-assessment tool was refined into an expanded, web-based version.
Conclusions:
- Healthcare coalitions can utilize this tool for evaluating pediatric preparedness levels.
- The tool aids in identifying specific areas for improvement in disaster response for children.
- Implementation of the tool can lead to better outcomes for children, families, and communities during emergencies.
Objective:
A significant number of disaster and emergency victims are children. Yet, many hospitals are ill-prepared to care for these patients during disasters, as identified by the National Pediatric Readiness Project's survey of hospital pediatric disaster plans. The Region V for Kids Center of Excellence created a self-assessment tool to help regions identify vulnerabilities and ways to enhance care for vulnerable children and families.
Methods:
Region V for Kids identified 9 key domains (eg, infrastructures and support mechanisms) that are important to safeguard children's and families' care during disasters. A self-assessment tool to assess these domains was distributed to 24 regional health care coalitions along with a 9-question usefulness survey. The self-assessment tool addressed 3 of the original domains, which have regional or national open-source databases and datapoints that health care coalitions can access for their responses.
Results:
The survey received a 50% response rate. Approximately 40% of respondents indicated they were "somewhat likely" to make changes based on data gathered by the tool. The original self-assessment tool was revised to create an expanded web-based version.
Conclusions:
Health care coalitions and localities can use this tool to evaluate pediatric preparedness, identify needed improvements, and improve outcomes for children, families, and communities.
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