Page 24 - DDME "The Disaster Forum"

PARTNERSHIP IN PREPAREDNESS
A partnership is an arrangement where par@es, known as partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The Turks & Caicos Islands Hospital, InterHealth Canada (TCIH), works with several key stakeholders to effec@vely manage all phases of the disaster cycle with the mutual interests of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of persons and ensuring resilience on the community. While there are several roles and responsibili@es that are within our direct remit we recognize that it is through a collabora@ve rela@onship with our partners the greatest gains are achieved.
The TCIH along with several of our partners and the community was impacted by the major hurricanes of Irma and Maria in September 2017. We believe that the impact would have been even greater if we did not prepare and have mi@ga@on strategies. While there may have been significant infrastructure damages experienced by many the resilience displayed was commendable and we were all grateful there wasn’t a mass casualty event.
To be truly effec@ve at preven@ng and responding to an emergency and disaster situa@on, all organiza@ons must create emergency protocols, procedures, and no@fica@ons and work to explain them consistently and carefully to internal and external stakeholders. Knowing your role and that of our partners is key to mi@ga@ng against chaos and confusion, wasted resources through duplica@on and ineffec@ve coordina@on.
Some of the key strategic ac@vi@es that are employed by TCIH fall under the following main categories: A. TheplansprovidetheframeworkandoperaTonaldirecTonfor:
Emergency response ac@va@on, deac@va@on and debrief All hazards mi@ga@on approach
Incident command ac@va@on and deac@va@on
Security & vulnerability assessments
Service con@nuity plans
Standard opera@ng procedures
Advanced medical post ac@va@on and deac@va@on Service recovery
B. Exercise and Drill– plans are meant to be exercised so that refinements are made through lessons learned. The major hurricanes of September 2017 provided invaluable experience that formed the basis of a review of our plans to capture lessons learned and system enhancement. Hurricane preparedness ac@vi@es are done internally but the invaluable informa@on is gained from those ac@vi@es done with our partners which take the form of:
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