Preparing for Disaster: Behind the Scenes of Maintaining and Deploying an Emergency Medical Team…Equipped. Prepared. Ready.

Abstract

Introduction:

Deploying an EMT to respond to a sudden onset disaster entails significant operational activities and support back home to deploy and support a responding team. These activities also include peacetime operations, exercising, innovation, engagement, training, and development of both team members and operational staff to further knowledge and experience.

Aim:

To exhibit the operational activities and complexities of maintaining a deployable cache of equipment and consumables for deploying a self-sustaining Emergency Medical Team (EMT). This includes the elements of managing a high-performance team, human resource management ensuring the readiness of personnel to rapidly respond, maintaining World Health Organization (WHO) international standards for EMTs, and the operational aspects and support behind the scenes to deploy a team.

Methods:

Analysis of operational activities and support for pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment phases including preparedness through innovation, collaboration, development, and maintenance of a high-performance team and cache.

Results:

The analysis of operational activities behind the scenes of deploying EMT maps the unique complexities of maintaining and deploying a high-performance team at all stages of deployment, demonstrating the success of a team in the field is attributed to the support and activities of the team back home to deploy them.

Discussion:

There is substantial preparation and behind the scenes operational activities that are undertaken to deploy and support a deployed EMT. Lessons learned from each deployment build on the operational capacity of staff deploying a team and on the future directions, innovations, and practices of a deployed team in the field.