LAC DPH Health Service Response Worker Trainings

Licensed nursing personnel must be equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to respond and provide population based care during emergencies. As devastating disasters have occurred, such as a Tsunami in Southeast Asia, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and an Earthquake in Haiti, during natural or man made disasters emergency preparedness has been a crucial element to the response phase of an emergency. Insuring that licensed nursing personal are equipped with the necessary skill to face all types of emergencies has been an ongoing goal of Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LAC-DPH)

In response to meeting this goal, collaborations/partnerships have been established by LAC DPH with the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Red Cross (ARC). Forty two employees were certified during 2007 and 2008 as BCLS instructors through AHA. The Public Health Nursing BCLS instructors have certified a major portion of DPH licensed nursing personnel and medical doctors in BCLS and First Aid. Currently, DPH Nursing Administration is working on becoming a training center.

Nurses have also trained through the ARC as instructors to provide workshops in Health Service response. The instructors collaborate with ARC to provide training workshops to the licensed nursing personnel. Now many nurses are trained to respond in emergency response shelters. Licensed nursing personnel are on call as emergency responders to assist as shelter support as needed in local disaster shelters such as floods, and fire emergencies. The collaborations continue to bring forth new educational and skills training opportunities that will increase the capacity, skills and knowledge of the LAC DPH nursing licensed personnel in emergency disaster response. For a full and timely response depends on a competent workforce that is prepared for both acute and mass casualty needs of the impacted population as well as the long-term needs of the community (Weiner, 2006).