Navigating the perfect storm of emergency responsiveness for pharmacy experiential education

Natural disasters and emergency situations, such as a massive cyberattacks can occur without warning and can impact academic operations, including experiential education. Weather-related catastrophes like hurricanes, tornados, flooding, and forest fires, require action to support students, preceptors, and communities, while cyberattacks and other challenges to technological infrastructure require similarly coordinated responses. Often, a "perfect storm" of circumstances leads to compounding issues and associated challenges for experiential educational operations, while also impacting local populations and the health systems that are providing critical healthcare for impacted communities. The time-sensitive nature of responding to disasters can often rush pharmacy faculty and administrators into urgent hasty decision making, when disaster response needs planning to ensure that all parties come out ahead in the long-term. Decisions and efforts can be informed by previous emergent situations and the wisdom gained from others across the Academy. Herein we provide reflections from multiple PharmD educational programs experiencing recent, large-scale disasters and provide approaches for aiding experiential education teams in responding to disasters safely, efficiently, and effectively.