Preparing Hospitals and Clinics for the Psychological Consequences of a Terrorist Incident or Other Public Health Emergency

Lisa S. Meredith, David Eisenman, Terri Tanielian, Stephanie L. Taylor, Ricardo Basurto-Davila

ResearchPublished Dec 11, 2007

Health care facilities usually have general disaster plans for dealing with the medical consequences of public health emergencies. However, most of their disaster plans do not address the psychological consequences of such events. These training manuals are designed to fill the gap by providing curricula that can be used to train hospital and clinic staff and department of mental health staff who would be deployed to hospitals and clinics about how to prepare for and respond to the psychological consequences of large-scale disasters. Meredith et al. include three separate training modules to address the needs of three audiences: (1) administrators and disaster planning and response staff in hospitals and clinics; (2) clinical, mental health, and non-clinicalstaff in hospitals and clinics; (3) disaster mental health staff in Los Angeles County. Terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other large-scale public health emergencies such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or pandemic flu can result in a large number of psychological casualties. Large-scale disasters can stress the capacity of hospitals and clinics to deal with the psychological consequences — the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive reactions — that could result from a terrorist or other public health event for victims, families, and staff members. The materials in these manuals are intended to be flexible so that hospital and clinic disaster coordinators can tailor a training session to the needs of local staff.

All trainer, participant, and self-study manuals as well as the various tools described in the manual are downloadable from the the Los Angeles County Web site.

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Meredith, Lisa S., David Eisenman, Terri Tanielian, Stephanie L. Taylor, and Ricardo Basurto-Davila, Preparing Hospitals and Clinics for the Psychological Consequences of a Terrorist Incident or Other Public Health Emergency. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007. https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR493z1.html.
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This work was collaboratively produced by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Emergency Management Services (EMS) Agency and the RAND Corporation with funding provided by the Hospital Preparedness Program grant.

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