A Good Approach to Overcoming Infectious Disease Outbreaks

A Good Approach to Overcoming Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Healthcare organizations play critical roles in responding to emergency management issues. Epidemics are inevitable, and hospitals ought to develop proper approaches to deal with them when they occur. For instance, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, a deadly viral and highly communicable disease had almost crippled many healthcare organizations due to the rapidly increasing number of infected individuals. The worst thing that contributed to adverse consequences was that coronavirus had no cure, and hospitals admitted patients in critical condition to help manage the symptoms. In that light, healthcare organizations should embrace emergency preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery. Hospital emergency committees should ensure that a health institution has a better approach to addressing medical emergency issues when they occur. They should not start preparing when the disaster has already happened. The paper focuses on an appropriate approach to addressing the outbreak of an infectious disease. Moreover, a process map for the approach to be implemented will be generated to show how the hospital will respond to the emergency management problem. A Proper Approach to Address an Aspect of Medical Emergency Management Issue
Healthcare administrators hold critical responsibilities for preparing, mitigating, responding to, and recovering from infectious disease outbreaks, particularly within their communities. In particular, an outbreak might affect only a specific region, nationwide, or worldwide, like the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital management, administrators, managers, and emergency management committees should ensure that there exist well-established protocols and procedures in place to address healthcare-related disasters. So far, the world has encountered several deadly pandemics and epidemics, including Ebola and coronavirus. On that note, it would inappropriate for hospitals to establish proper strategies to address such epidemics when they have already happened. By learning from the pandemics or epidemics that have happened, it is vital to have well-established protocols for dealing with infectious disease outbreaks. Based on the epidemics and pandemics that have occurred in the past, it is evident that healthcare professionals have to inevitably risk their health to help the affected individuals (Markwell et al., 2020). In the case of the most recent pandemic, COVID-19, some physicians got infected while helping their patients. Some of the factors that might have contributed to healthcare providers’ infection are increased patient admission, the lack of enough personal protection equipment (PPE), or compromised PPEs among others. As such, if healthcare professionals feel as if their lives are at risk, they might fail to meet their responsibilities of providing proper patient care. The best approach to address the outbreak of infectious diseases should comprise various elements. First, healthcare professionals should be well-prepared through effective training and lifelong learning. A medical organization should develop and implement a standardized system that describes preparedness activities (Rooij et al., 2020). Since there are different types of epidemics and pandemics, clinicians should know the effective ways to deal with them. For instance, when a hospital admits at least four patients from a specific locality portraying similar symptoms, an alarm should be raised for healthcare professionals to be on the lookout and report immediately if more patients with such illnesses visit the hospital. The most significant thing that can enable healthcare providers to know the onset of an infectious disease outbreak is effective training. When treating patients, physicians should interact with them to understand how these individuals got sick. In most cases, the source of an outbreak is the same, and if two or three people say that they ate something or visited the same place before they got sick, there is a high probability that they were exposed to similar pathogens.
Second, healthcare providers should know how to protect themselves from infectious disease outbreaks before helping the affected individuals. Many physicians or caregivers would hesitate to provide quality healthcare services when they do not understand whether they are safe when they volunteer to assist their patients. Besides, offering medical assistance without knowing how the outbreak spread is a significant problem since it might lead to healthcare providers being infected, paralyzing the healthcare institutions. In addition, healthcare workers become stressed when managing outbreaks of infectious diseases since they can be infected if they fail to adhere to the set protocols (Belfroid et al., 2018). For example, this might be the reason some physicians became infected with coronavirus at the beginning when they did not know how the disease is spread. The best approach for healthcare professionals to manage infectious disease outbreaks would be to minimize their chances of being infected to zero. That way, they get the confidence to assist those infected without the fear that they might get sick. Third, hospital management teams should use drills occasionally to ensure that healthcare professionals are always prepared and on the lookout for possible infectious disease outbreaks. Since drills simulate an actual healthcare emergency issue, physicians apply the lessons they have acquired throughout their training. For instance, during the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare providers were concerned about alleviating patients’ suffering and were ready to work in new contexts. However, some of the things that hindered their efforts include the fear of being infected, feeling powerless to help infected people, infecting others if they were infected and did not know, and heavy workloads (Liu et al., 2020). Even if healthcare workers are well-trained, they cannot be effective in handling infectious disease outbreaks without practicing. For example, dealing with the pressure associated with the increased workload is not something that physicians can handle without regular practice. That is why drills are highly recommended since they simulate a real-life incident where healthcare professionals are expected to react accordingly to overcome the emergency issue at hand. Clinicians understand how to multitask when they practice. Otherwise, they become confused and would end up hurting more patients than the ones they help. As a result, drills help healthcare providers to cope with highly stressful situations and adapt to self-management strategies that enable them to be constructive during emergencies.
The fourth critical thing in the new approach to address infectious disease outbreaks is taking laboratory tests to identify all the ways in which the illness can be transmitted so that healthcare professionals can caution the public. Specifically, infectious disease epidemics or pandemics lead to stigma and social consequences within cultures, health systems, and conditions (Saeed et al., 2020). Helping healthcare providers protect themselves against these illnesses ensures that there are enough professionals to assist the infected population. However, determining how the infectious disease is transmitted is essential to reducing the rate of infections. For instance, the rapidly increasing rate of COVID-19 infections made it challenging for healthcare institutions to deal with it. Some hospitals had admitted patients beyond their bed capacities, exposing physicians to a high risk of infection. In others, infected individuals lay in hospital corridors since they had no option. As much as a hospital can get volunteers and increase resources to handle patients during epidemics or pandemics, it cannot be of much assistance if more and more individuals become infected. However, knowing how the disease is transmitted can help to curb the rate of infections so that healthcare institutions can have a manageable number of patients. The method worked with coronavirus and can work with any other infectious disease outbreak. For instance, when the World Health Organization (WHO) together with other agencies cautioned people to wear facemasks, maintain social distance, and avoid overcrowded areas, the rate of infections started plummeting. Moreover, the government intervened by initiating lockdowns in areas with a rapid increase of infections to reduce the transmission and help hospitals to deal with the affected individuals. A good approach to overcoming infectious disease outbreaks should emphasize how individuals can acquire protective equipment and other relevant resources. On that note, hospitals should collaborate and communicate with external agencies to ensure that the public can get what is needed for them to safeguard themselves. For example, if individuals were told that they were required to wear facemasks and cannot get them, it would not have helped. Nevertheless, telling people what they need and where to get it is the most significant thing. Many individuals started wearing facemasks when they were readily available in retail stores, which contributed to decreased rate of COVID-19 infections. As such, the proposed solution should be feasible for it to have positive outcomes.
Process Mapping of the New Approach to Address Infectious Disease Outbreak
Figure 1
A Process Map of Addressing an Infectious Disease Outbreak

















Process mapping is critical since it shows a better understanding of the emergency management issue to enable the implementation of proper interventions (Antonacci et al., 2021). Figure 1 shows various factors that should be emphasized during the onset of an infectious disease outbreak. They include how the illness is transmitted, casualties, affected communities, transmission agents, how hospitals should address the disease, and the risk of exposure to healthcare providers. These things determine whether a healthcare institution is ready to address the problem or not. The following are the healthcare response measures that should be considered to facilitate the effectiveness of addressing the infectious disease outbreak.
Medical Evaluation
For a healthcare institution to be well-prepared and responsive to an infectious disease outbreak, it should have adequate resources. In particular, epidemics or pa...