Almost every year a hurricane blast through Florida and takes its toll on the business, industry and affects the lives and dollars of the company and its workers. One can ask themselves, "How do we prevent this from happening again?" This is usually what businesses and persons affected by a hurricane ask each other. What about a hospital? How would a hospital prepare for a hurricane? To complicate things more, how would a hospital prepare for a hurricane if the hospital is to operate 24 hours a day? This is the question that Pierre, Keith, Carol, Getta and James have proposed.
In order to address this type of question our group had to conduct research. We had to develop a research process. We decided to use the management-research hierarchy model as a basis for our research. The initial research that was conducted was informational. The informational research was to find out how other hospitals react to a hurricane. The problem with this type of search was that a hospital will not have a specific hurricane plan. We had to change our informational outlook. In other words we expanded our search category.
A hurricane is considered a disaster. To be specific it is a natural disaster. So we all searched, "How a hospital prepares for a natural disaster". Bingo, we found numerous resources concerning hospitals and how they prepare for these types of incidents. The fist article was titled, "Hospital Disaster Preparedness: Meeting a Requirement or Preparing for the Worst?"(Paul V. Richter [PVR], 1997). This article explained in detail a hospital plan for disaster in West Columbia, SC. The article was written as a basic manual for all hospitals to follow. It was submitted to South Carolina Hospital Association as a guide. Many things are explained in this ...