Heartbeat: SWB puts emergency planning to the test

July 11, 2022

Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘Failure to prepare is preparing to fail’. The saying couldn’t be more relevant for our teams across SWB and the wider NHS.

As a healthcare provider, we must plan for and be able to respond to a wide range of incidents and emergencies that could affect health or patient care. Examples of incidents could be extreme weather conditions, a transport accident or a terrorist act.

Within the NHS, this area of work is called emergency preparedness resilience and response (EPRR). Given that we could face unknown threats at any time, we have a team in place that oversee this crucial piece of work. Their role ensures we have the right plans in place to respond to or manage incidents. Plus, they work with teams to ensure their business continuity plans are in place and that they stand up to the pressures critical incidents would potentially place on our organisation and services.

Plans such as these are not unique to the NHS. The emergency services, local authority departments, fire service, police and voluntary organisations also have plans to respond to emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

With the Commonwealth Games on the horizon, we recently held two mock emergency planning sessions involving clinical and operational colleagues from frontline teams to our executive team. Both sessions were part of NHS planning activity and focused on terror threats, but each had a different focus.

The first session took place in April. The purpose of this session was to test emergency plans, our command and control arrangements and how we performed our roles and executed our responsibilities, including handling press queries.

Our second session in May had a clinical focus, and teams dealt with a trauma threat. The session aimed to build on our existing knowledge and identify gaps in how we respond. Clinical colleagues used the emergo train system to triage and treat patients within their teams.

Caroline Rennalls, Assistant Director of Operations and Resilience Management, explained: “Holding these sessions was essential as it enabled us to test drive all of our plans and processes. Putting our theory to the test is vital as we need to be able to stand up to any potential threats.

“All colleagues are asked to familiarise themselves with their business continuity plans. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email swbh.EPRRAdmin@nhs.net.”