How to Prepare your Practice for a Disaster or Emergency
Our region is vulnerable to a range of hazards including bushfires, severe storms, flash flooding, riverine flooding, heatwaves, power and communications outages and more. These events can occur with little warning and have serious impacts on the safety and wellbeing of patients and practice staff.
It is important general practices have a comprehensive, localised emergency plan and a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to enact in emergency or disaster events. Consider:
- Does your practice have a plan for an emergency or disaster event?
- Has it been recently reviewed and practised?
- Has your practice considered the 'what ifs' that may impact your practice and operations?
General practices that know their risks, are prepared and stay infomed, respond and recover better from emergency and disaster events.
How we can help your practice plan for an emergency
We can support you to remain operational and provide continuity of care for your patients by:
- Helping you make an emergency plan with specialised tools and support
- Helping you review and practice your emergency plan (it’s vital that once you have a plan you regularly review and practise it with your team).
- Helping you meet your accreditation requirements for emergency management (eg. Criterion 3.3 Our practice has an emergency response plan for unexpected events, such as natural disasters, pandemic diseases, or unplanned absences of clinical team members).
- Helping connect you with local emergency and community services and to ensure your plan has identified risks and information appropriate for your location.
- Through our localised Disaster Planning and Management HealthPathway.
- A range of training and support opportunities are available online and face-to-face.
- We can visit your practice to support you on site.
Tips for being prepared
Know your risk
It is important to plan for the full range of hazards that might impact your practice.
Emergency services have tools to help you identify risks
Speak with local experts about your risks via local emergency service contact details
Make or review an emergency plan
There are a range of templates for making emergency plans. While using a template is not required, it can be a useful tool to identify potential gaps you may not have considered. Reviewing your existing plan against a template can also help strengthen and refine it.
Resources
Stay informed
Your Local City Council Emergency Dashboards are a one-stop shop and source of truth that will connect you to the emergency management services, road closures, traffic access etc. It's helpful to bookmark these on your computer.
For up-to-date information on your mobile, install the Hazards Near Me, Emergency Plus and BOM Weather Apps. Track the most up to date warnings:
For regular updates from NBMPHN, register for our News Updates to receive disaster updates.
Understanding warnings
Visit the NSW SES warning page to understand what different warning levels mean, from staying informed (Advice), to preparing to act (Watch and Act), to taking immediate action (Emergency Warning).Understanding Warnings, learn more about the different warnings to stay informed.
It is important to
- Exercise your plan on a regular basis (eg. as a desktop exercise).
- Contact other practices in your local area and agree on how you can offer mutual support (eg. if your practice is affected by a fire or another emergency and needs to close, you can have a plan in place to direct your patients to a nearby practice until the risk has been averted).
- Have a plan in place to send communications to patients about service disruptions or changes.
HealthPathways
Our HealthPathways team led the national development of a suite of pathways addressing Disaster Planning and Management addressing issues related to patients and general practice preparedness and recovery.
The pathways that have been developed are:
Mental health support for staff and patients
Thinking about disasters or emergencies can be hard for those who have been previously affected, regardless of how much time has passed.
Support is available through our Medicare Mental Health phone line on 1800 595 212.
This is not a crisis service. If you need urgent support outside of business hours, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Mental Health Line on 1800 011 511. If you need immediate help or are at risk of harm to yourself or others, call 000.
The most effective support you can provide during a time of disaster is to consider extending practice opening hours to accommodate an increase in patient demand.
Disaster Management Webinar
More information
If you would like support or if we can help in any way, please reach out to your Primary Care Engagement Officer or contact our Disaster and Emergency Coordinator by email or by phone on 4708 8100.
