Patients With Special Considerations, Essay Example

Patients with special considerations during a mass casualty event are those found in nursing homes or rehabilitation centers and cannot move from one place to the next independently. Besides, there may be no other place for them to go apart from the nursing home and no family. Often family members leave them abandoned under these circumstances. Consequently,the role of the nurses in protecting those who are in danger, such as patients trapped in a nursing home environment has been carefully outlined by the American Nurses Association policy statement regarding Standards of Care under Extreme conditions (American Nurses Association, 2010 ).

First it encompasses the role nurses have to play from a professional perspective. There are two major responsibilities. First a state of readiness for emergency response must be maintained and in the second instance he/she must ensure thatthe organization/ institutiondisaster plan is current and appropriate for emergency response practice. Significantly,nurses have become aware of their part, which must be played as first responders for patients with special considerations (Veenema,2007).

More importantly, as a measure of protecting patients under special conditions nurses are mandated to apply skills and training form discerning discern emerging illness patterns and unusual clusters of disease presentations. They are expected to report all notifiable cases detected during the mass casualty event to public health authorities. Patient care must be initiated at all times within the nursing scope practice to relive suffering during as mass causality event progresses. Subsequent appropriate steps must be instituted and strategies devised to control disease and limit contamination by wearing protective garments. Ultimately, stress assessment must be undertaken and appropriately managed through referrals to mental health resources (Smith, 2010).

Works cited

American Nurses Association.Adapting Standards of Care under Extreme conditions.

American Nurse Association Center for Health Policy. 2008. Print

Smith, J. Mass Causality: Are you prepared? Nursing. 2010. Print.

Veenema, T. G. Disaster nursing and emergency preparedness. For chemical, biological, and radiological terrorism and other hazards. (3nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company 2007. Print